


Didn’t want to be your ghost (but i don’t want anybody else)

by Anonymous



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Community: tsn_kinkmeme, Fix-It, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 73,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23144188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mark has an one-night stand with somebody and calls out the wrong name. Eduardo's. The person sells the story to the media, things get kind of crazy.Eduardo is vastly unimpressed by the whole thing because everybody is watching him now, the media attention is on him. Also, it's endangering his career because the part of the world he's working in/the business he's in doesn't deal all that nicely with people/their business partners being gay.And well, Eduardo isn't even gay to begin with, only now he starts to imagine things and that isn't helpful either.Eduardo being angsty and bitchy and worrying about his future and Mark being Mark. Happy ending, please.
Relationships: Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 14
Kudos: 83
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally Posted on LiveJournal: https://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/6467.html?thread=12938051#t12938051

_A/N:_ This is my first venture into filling a kinkmeme prompt, and my first venture into this fandom, and I am. Freaking. Out. So please, be gentle. The title is from The National’s “Anyone’s Ghost”.  
_Warnings:_ Coarse language, sexual content, angst, psychological unhealthiness, and possibly slight D/s in future chapters.  
_**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me, and the characters are based on those of the movie The Social Network, not on the real people. Please don’t sue!_  
  
**didn’t want to be your ghost (but i don’t want anybody else)**  
  
The universe must hate him. There’s no other explanation for why Eduardo is having a gay crisis of epic proportions _when he isn’t even gay_.  
  
It’s been two hours since he got a call in his office from Anthony, the only old friend from the Phoenix he’s still close to, who just said “check your Google alerts, man, because _Jesus fucking Christ_”. It’s been an hour and forty-five minutes since he left the building, stares and whispers following him. It’s been seventy minutes since he arrived at his apartment, just barely beating what can only be paparazzi.  
  
He has thirty-eight new messages.  
  
His ex-girlfriend, presumably as of two hours ago (“you really just could have _told me_, Eduardo!”), his assistant Ava (“Mr. Saverin, I’ll have a list of publicists to you by end of day”), his mother (sobbing about grandchildren), Chris (“I know, okay, I really do, but please, _please_ call me before talking to anyone else, for the love of God, Wardo, _please_”), Gretchen (“let me know if you’re considering litigation”), and a few friends (who are mostly supportive and sympathetic, thankfully) are amongst a truly alarming number of newspaper, magazine and TV reporters.  
  
(Eduardo may be ignoring the one from his father, spoken entirely in Portuguese and in entirely too calm a voice, instructing him to call as soon as possible. Just maybe.)  
  
And his phone is ringing again. Eduardo stares at it like a rabid animal that has him cornered.  
  
“Hey, man, you turned off your cell!” says Sean’s voice from his speaker, and it says something about the gravity of the situation that Eduardo nearly collapses in relief at the sound. He and Sean have been on civil, even friendly, terms for a while now, but all that means is that Eduardo finds him equal parts amusing and annoying. “Not cool. It’s called call display, bitch, look it up.”  
  
There’s a pause, because Sean is always irked when he says something as awkward as ‘called call display’; it doesn’t fit in with his self-image (which he describes as “Casanova’s way with the ladies, Wilde’s wit, and James Bond’s cool charm…up to eleven”, and Eduardo describes as “delusions of grandeur”). It frightens Eduardo a little that he’s become familiar enough with Sean to be aware of this tendency.  
  
“When you’ve reached your quota of dramatic flailing and whining, call me back. But not before then, because I cannot deal with puppy dog eyes. Or puppies in general. Remind me to tell you the story with the beagle, the midgets and the eggplant sometime.”  
  
Eduardo makes a mental note to remind Sean that one cannot actually hear someone giving you puppy dog eyes over the phone, and to never, ever ask about the beagle story.  
  
His phone rings again and Eduardo flinches. Wonderful, he’s developing a phobia of phones now. Won’t his therapist be pleased.  
  
It turns out his terror was justified, because if he’s not mistaken, that’s _Christy’s_ voice coming from the speaker now (Eduardo quickly shuts the blinds and curses Dustin for making him watch _Scream_ a dozen times freshman year).  
  
“Hi, Eduardo! I just heard the news, and I really cannot believe I didn’t see it sooner. I mean, I was right there when you were all jealous about Mark and Sean Parker. It wasn’t the Silicon Valley sluts I had to be concerned about at all, was it? Oh, well. The obsession with suits should have tipped me off, if nothing else. Just so you know, I _forgive_ you.”  
  
Immediately after the message ends, his phone is ringing. Again. Eduardo is starting to feel a headache coming on.

“Um,” says Ava, which makes Eduardo’s mood swing from verging on panic to falling over the edge, because he has never heard his assistant sound so hesitant before, “we might have a problem besides negative publicity on our hands, Mr. Saverin. 377A is rarely enforced these days, but it _is_ technically still in the penal code, and – well – it’s something that a business rival could use against you. I’ve been looking into some of our clients’ files and found a few who are supporters of politicians who opposed the petition to repeal the law and publicly condemned homosexuality…”  
  
Well, shit. Eduardo had been thinking mostly about the public embarrassment he was going to have to suffer because of Mark (again). He’d been thinking about how, just as the shareholder meetings at Facebook were starting to be less insanely awkward, a new elephant now exists to be shoved into the boardroom. He’d been thinking about how to avoid the media’s attention until the next drug bust of some teenage pop star deflects it.  
  
He’d been thinking that life was incredibly unfair, because until a few hours ago he was finally at a place when he didn’t think of Facebook with gut-wrenchingly mixed feelings, when he didn’t think of California with unreasonable hatred, and when he didn’t think of Mark much at all.  
  
(He mostly certainly has _not_ been thinking about the fact that Mark apparently thinks about him when he – when he –)  
  
It hadn’t even occurred to Eduardo that this might have a very serious and very negative effect on his career.  
  
That settles it, then. He is going to _kill_ Mark.  
  
\--  
  
“Let me get this straight,” says Chris, ignoring Dustin’s snicker as readily as Mark is ignoring him. “Last week, after I threatened to call your mother and you agreed to go home and get a minimum of six hours sleep, you instead went to a bar, proceeded to get drunk and to let a stranger pick you up. You then had sex with this stranger, called out Eduardo’s name during the act, and then insulted the man’s lack of linguistic creativity for calling you an asshole before you left.”  
  
Chris sucks in a breath, and then finishes in a tone that suggests Mark caused the Apocalypse, or murdered all the kittens in the world, or was behind the cancellation of _Firefly_: “And you didn’t have him sign a non-disclosure agreement.”  
  
“I insulted his lack of creativity in blowjobs too,” Mark says without glancing up from his laptop. “It was disappointingly pedestrian. But I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better from a Brown graduate.”  
  
Chris rubs his temples, warding off what is either an encroaching migraine or the impulse to brain Mark with his own stapler.  
  
Dustin’s betting on the latter, judging by a) personal experience, b) the way Chris is now trying to Care Bear Stare Mark into realizing what a monumental fuck-up he’s made, and c) the fact that it’s, you know, _Mark_.  
  
“Long story short, the guy sells the story to the highest bidding tabloid, ensuing media storm, blah blah blah,” he interjects, because if he just sits back and lets Chris try to make Mark behave like a normal human, they’ll be here all day. “Let’s get back to the good stuff – you said Wardo’s name, Mark. In bed. During sex. Whilst fucking. In the throes of -”  
  
“I get the point, stop repeating yourself,” Mark snaps.  
  
Well, that’s vaguely alarming. Mark never gives in that quickly to Dustin’s needling, for one, and for another, that retort is far beneath his usual standard. However hard Mark is pretending, he’s clearly so far from unaffected that anyone remotely less – well, _robotic_ is the term Dustin thinks most applicable – would be shaking and dry-heaving into the potted plants.  
  
Then again, this is Mark and Eduardo. Dustin should have expected melodrama.

Chris is evidently more concerned about his own mental breakdown than Mark’s. “You realize I’m going to have to have a conversation with him about this soon? I’m going to have to have a conversation with _Eduardo_ about _Facebook_ and _Mark_ and _sex_.”  
  
Huh. Dustin’s not sure he’s ever seen Chris sweat before when finals or heat stroke-inducing temperatures weren’t involved.  
  
“The first of those topics has only recently stopped being unbearably awkward, the second was tacitly understood to be off-limits unless Mark was, like, dying or something, and the last – I mean, Eduardo’s an attractive guy and all –”  
  
Mark finally looks at Chris, and it’s only because Dustin was waiting and watching for it that he catches it. Mark looks at Chris, and his gaze is cold and sharp and _intent_ in a way that Dustin has only seen a few times before. It makes a chill run down his spine.  
  
“– but at this point, it’s kind of like he’s my attractive _cousin_, so just – no.”  
  
Mark loses all interest in staring at Chris like a surgeon searching for a starting point, so Dustin can let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and says, “Hot cousins. The squick outweighs the hotness, I hear you.”  
  
Chris shoots him a disgusted look (a _mock_-disgusted look, of course; Chris adores him, really) before turning back to Mark. “You need to get a statement out there as soon as possible, and I need to be able to tell Eduardo something that will stop him from freaking out as soon as he calls, so you need to tell me how you want to play this, Mark.”  
  
“I thought that was what I paid you for.”  
  
“You _don’t_ pay me,” Chris reminds him, and Dustin joins in on glaring at Mark, because he’s been trying to ignore that Chris is only back temporarily. “I’m only here to help out after you scared off your last head of PR and because we have a while before election season. So it would be nice if you could try, just a little, to help me help you.”  
  
Mark scoffs. “You sound like a motivational poster in a community college.”  
  
“Mark. We really need to start doing some damage control. You -”  
  
On top of Mark’s desk, Chris’s cell phone starts to ring. Chris stares at it with unmitigated terror; Mark stares very determinedly at an invisible spot on the wall.  
  
Dustin’s tempted to roll his eyes and answer it himself, but. Well. It would be awkward. He and Eduardo talk, occasionally, and it hasn’t been tense in a while now, but they didn’t stay friends, not like Eduardo and Chris did, after – After.  
  
Then again, they can’t leave Eduardo hanging, unless they want a repeat of the chicken freak-out, which was really only hilarious in person. Before Dustin can pick it up, Chris snatches it away and hits the ‘end’ button.  
  
“I have to say, Christopher, I am shocked and appalled by your rudeness -”  
  
“Dustin, since I need Eduardo not to have an embolism and me not to go to prison for double-murder, shut. Up. Please.”  
  
Chris really does look like he’s starting to remember that, hey, he knows the President, he could totally get away with murder, so Dustin holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. It’s not like I want to get involved in any Mark and Eduardo drama, anyway.”  
  
“A little late for that, I think,” Chris says, quiet, and Dustin can’t help but recoil a bit.  
  
It’s easy for him to forget, most of the time, that nothing about this situation is actually funny at all when you think about it.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N:_ First, thank you so much to everyone who has commented! I was really nervous about trying to write in this fandom, but this prompt was just too perfect to pass up, and the support is amazing!  
  
Next, some necessary additional disclaimers – my knowledge of Singapore and Singaporean law is limited to what Google and Wikipedia tell me, so I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies. Also, while I’m unbelievably relieved my strange sense of humour has translated for some people, the OP did ask for some angst. I’m trying to keep some humour in where I can, but it will get angstier.  
  
\--  
  
Okay. So, evidently? It’s kind of difficult to explain to various colleagues and business contacts that you are not in fact gay, while also making it clear that you believe there is nothing wrong with being gay and are therefore not going to participate in or tolerate their homophobia.  
  
Eduardo has almost quoted _Seinfeld_ (“not that there’s anything wrong with that!”) far too many times over the past few days.  
  
He’s been trying to convince himself that the worst of it is over, or close enough. After all, he’s already talked to his father, and Eduardo can’t imagine there’s a circle in hell that could compare to that conversation. It was almost as bad as telling him about the dilution was.  
  
Besides, Chris had assured him that Facebook was preparing a statement and everything would start clearing up soon.  
  
But it’s been a few days now, and there’s no statement, and no end to the media spotlight, and no lack of people leaving ‘supportive’ messages for him on his voicemail or his Facebook page. He’s starting to lose clients. And sleep. And patience.  
  
If he starts going grey over this, he’s going to sell his Facebook stock to the _fucking Winklevii_.  
  
“I know, Eduardo, okay, I’m working on it,” Chris says without preamble when he answers his phone.  
  
“What could possibly be taking this long? You told me days ago that you had it handled, that I wouldn’t have to worry about it, and that I couldn’t murder Mark without giving you an ulcer.”  
  
“I think I’m getting an ulcer anyway. I’d promise you an alibi if you decided to murder Mark after all, but I’m pretty sure this media shitstorm would ensure that the official story would be about jilted lovers, so.”  
  
“So Mark’s the problem.” Of course he is. Story of Eduardo’s life.  
  
“Yeah. He’s being…weird about this.”  
  
“It’s Mark, is he ever not weird?”  
  
“This is different. The complete lack of embarrassment isn’t surprising –”  
  
Eduardo snorts. “Right. God forbid Mark be capable of shame like us lesser mortals.”  
  
“– but instead of doing damage control, he’s ignoring it.”  
  
“Not deigning to acknowledge a situation he considers beneath him. Sounds just like Mark to me.”  
  
Chris sighs, says “Wardo”, and then stops.  
  
It’s like a punch to the gut. The nickname, or the tone, or the reason behind both, the reminder. Eduardo hasn’t been this bitter – hasn’t _allowed himself_ to be this bitter – in a long time. He’s backsliding, and Chris can tell because he remembers when it was at its worst, because he was there to witness the mess that was Eduardo’s life in between the dilution and the depositions.  
  
(Because he was the one who said, “You shouldn’t let your life revolve around Mark. It’s not healthy now, but it never was in the first place.”)  
  
Eduardo lets his breath catch for a minute and then breathes out, closing his eyes as he listens to Chris.

“As I was saying, I can deal with Mark’s usual idiosyncrasies. But this isn’t Mark refusing to be interrupted while on a coding binge, or Mark wanting to delegate something he shouldn’t or refusing to delegate something he should. This isn’t even Mark saying things that can never, ever be said to the public. This is Mark…doing nothing. He’s ignoring something potentially damaging to Facebook, Eduardo.”  
  
Put like that, Eduardo can’t deny that it is _extremely_ strange behaviour for Mark.  
  
“And I don’t know what to do, honestly. He – he’s either ignoring it, refusing to think about it at all because he can’t cope with it any other way…or he’s…well, maybe he, um, wants you to give your input on it.”  
  
Eduardo can feel his neck flush when Chris stumbles over the word ‘wants’. If Mark has been trying very hard to ignore the whole situation, Eduardo has been making Herculean efforts to ignore a particular part of the situation. Namely that Mark apparently thinks about him when he’s having sex.  
  
Or, at least, he did once.  
  
But what if it’s been more than once, and this was just the only time he was caught? What if Mark has said his name with other people, other men and women, and they never sold the story because they were paid off or pressured into signing NDAs or actually had principles? What if Mark thinks about him when he jerks off too?  
  
There are a dozen other _what ifs_, and then there are the _whys_ and the _how longs_, and Eduardo doesn’t want to know the answers to any of them.  
  
He could deal with the knowledge that his best friend – the person he’d liked and trusted and admired most in the world – had considered him disposable. He dealt with it because he had no other choice, because Mark made it very clear how little he valued him, in terms of actual percentages (_fractions_ of percentages). He’d learned to live with the fact that Mark did little more than use him for money, and throw him away when he no longer needed that.  
  
To now have to accept that Mark would have also used him for sex…  
  
Eduardo puts it out of his mind. He can’t dwell on that now. When the media crisis is over, and the potential crisis in his career has been averted, then he’ll sit down with his therapist and try to treat the latest wounds Mark’s inflicted, add a few more scars to the collection. But not now.  
  
“Chris, my goal is to get this problem resolved as soon as possible. If you think that I have to visit the Facebook offices to do that, then I will.”

  
\--

Even after giving Eduardo an honest answer, Chris isn’t sure it’s the right one.  
  
The businessman in him says it was the correct decision. Eduardo needs to come to Palo Alto so they can present a united front – the co-founders of Facebook, putting the past behind them to defend their company from libel. He and Mark need to tell the same story so that even if there are those who won’t believe them – and there always are – no one can prove anything, and everyone can save face. With a few carefully worded press releases and one well-choreographed press conference, they could have this turned around and use it to point out the heteronormative bias that still exists even in the so-called liberal media.  
  
Okay, the politician in him might have spoken up a bit too.  
  
As a friend, though, Chris thinks that Eduardo coming to California is a terrible idea. It’s not that he doesn’t believe Eduardo has made his peace with the past, because he does. But he also knows that it’s one thing for Eduardo to be over it on the opposite side of the world, when he and Mark have barely spoken a dozen words in years. It’s quite another to be over it when he’s here, having to deal with Mark again, this time with a new variable.  
  
Although Chris suspects it’s not new at all.  
  
(He remembers the first big PR disaster he had to deal with, Sean’s drug arrest and subsequent shove out of the company. He remembers wondering who called the cops on the party and that all he could think about was the way Mark looked at Sean and said _“you didn’t have to be that rough on him”_. He remembers anger and pity and relief and dread and guilt warring, turning his stomach into knots, when he would look at Mark and wonder, _are you doing this to Sean as a gesture to Wardo, or because you won’t let anyone hurt him but you?_)  
  
Well, what’s done is done. Chris firmly believes in moving forward instead of wallowing in the past, though he knows all too well that’s easier said than done.  
  
“Eduardo’s going to fly in,” he announces.  
  
Dustin stares at him, his expression uncharacteristically inscrutable. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”  
  
Only years of practice prevent Chris from snorting, or worse, sarcastically questioning Dustin’s sudden – far too late – concern for Eduardo. “He’ll be fine. He’s more impatient to get this all over and done with than anything else, I think.”  
  
“And you think Mark will be fine with him being here, right now?”  
  
“Why is _Mark_ the one you’re concerned about?” Chris snaps, because years of practice or not, he’s only human. An overtired, over-stressed human who has consumed far too much Pepto-Bismol in the past few days in a probably futile attempt to avert an ulcer before he’s turned thirty. At least he has enough self-control not to ask, _Why is Mark _always_ the one you’re more concerned about?_  
  
“Because he’s my friend, and my boss,” Dustin says, just as irritably, which Chris thinks is a sign about how much this is all getting to them (again).  
  
“And Eduardo is just your ex-colleague and your ex-friend -”  
  
“Who is going through some shit he doesn’t deserve, yes, but who will be able to forget all about it once the media crisis is over. We tell the truth – that Mark and Eduardo were never romantically involved, that Eduardo is straight anyway – and Eduardo will go back to Singapore and the whole thing will blow over in time. Eduardo won’t even have to think about any of this in a few months.  
  
“_Mark_, on the other hand, has obviously been thinking about this for _years_ and is probably not going to stop anytime soon.”

Chris isn’t sure how Dustin arrived at that conclusion, so he focuses on his extremely flawed premises. “First of all, this is not just some minor embarrassing incident that Eduardo can shrug off as easily as Mark can. The business circles Eduardo moves in are considerably more conservative than yours and Mark’s, not to mention frequently more homophobic. Fuck, there’s an anti-gay law still effect in Singapore.”  
  
Dustin’s eyes widen at that. “Shit. Seriously?”  
  
“Yes,” Chris says, wry but sharp enough to make Dustin wince. “He’s going to lose clients and consulting jobs over this, if he hasn’t already. Besides, even once we tell the truth, it doesn’t mean everyone will believe it, or that there won’t be some other asshole looking for publicity who will tell a tall tale about Eduardo or Mark or both. This isn’t just going to _blow over_, Dustin, and – and why should Eduardo have to deal with it at all, for that matter? Mark’s the one who made the mistake, Eduardo had nothing to do with it, and yet he’s got to pay for it too.”  
  
“It’s unfair, okay, I get it. Wardo has the right to be pissed off, I’m not saying he doesn’t. I’m just saying that you should remember Mark is upset too.”  
  
Chris raises an eyebrow in skepticism, but Dustin is insistent.  
  
“He _is_, Chris. He tries to hide it, but – think about it.”  
  
“I’d really rather not.” Because, frankly, _ew_. (Chris is allowed to be inarticulate and childish in his head, if nowhere else. Shut up.)  
  
“Chris.” Dustin is not smiling, and his tone is not jocular. “He’s still thinking about Eduardo that way, after all this time. What does that _mean_?”  
  
Chris doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to, either, because Mark became his boss first and his friend second years ago, entirely through his own actions.  
  
“You were making fun of him for it not so long ago,” he points out.  
  
Dustin shrugs. “I make fun of Mark at every opportunity. Also, incidentally, of everyone else. Besides, I might feel a little sorry for him and not want him to go, like, full-on supervillain ax crazy instead of just geek/cyborg hybrid quasi-crazy, but I know Mark’s an asshole, Chris.”  
  
The hint of bitterness in his tone makes Chris close his eyes for a moment. He forgets, sometimes, that even though Dustin pretty much sided with Mark back when everything went to shit, he also never wanted to have to make that choice.  
  
Sometimes Chris wonders if Dustin resents him a little too, for being able to avoid the same fate, for being able to stay friends with both Eduardo and Mark, even if he and Mark have only grown increasingly distant with time.  
  
(He’ll never trust Mark again. Ever. And he knows Mark knows that, the same way he knows that Mark begrudges Chris staying close to Eduardo.)  
  
“We have to focus on the future of the company,” Chris says, and he knows that Dustin hears what he’s really saying.  
  
_Let’s not dredge up the past.#_

_\--_

_Eduardo is meandering through the aisles of an airport duty-free shop when his iPhone rings. ‘Suzana’, the screen informs him, and Eduardo half-sighs, half-laughs in relief (a teenage girl briefly stops eyeing the giant vodka bottles to look at him as if concerned he’s going to leave baggage unattended).  
  
He was introduced to Suzana on his second day at work, apparently because their coworkers assumed that the two Brazilians in the office simply had to be friends. Eduardo had spent the first month semi-infatuated with his new colleague, but they only started spending time together after she quit. Sometime after learning that Suzana is possibly the biggest Star Trek nerd this side of the International Date Line, Eduardo stopped thinking of her as a potential girlfriend and started thinking of her as his best friend.  
  
“Thank God,” he says in lieu of hello.  
  
“You’re welcome, my child,” Suzana intones in what she probably thinks is a beatific voice.  
  
“You sound constipated,” Eduardo informs her. “Also, blasphemous.”  
  
“How exactly does someone sound while constipated?”  
  
“Like you, clearly.”  
  
Suzana groans. “Okay, if your jokes are that bad, it must be worse than I thought. Let me have it, Saverin.”  
  
Eduardo buys himself some time to find a location with far less potential eavesdroppers by asking Suzana about her travels. She might officially live in Singapore, but Eduardo suspects she spends more time on planes than in her apartment.  
  
“…and I swear, no one smiles in Eastern Europe, like, at all! Not even people who really should try much, much harder than they do to get a tip.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve read about how in their culture and with the history of communism -”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Suzana cuts him off, “I’m telling a story, not listening to you repeat things you learned in international business etiquette seminars.”  
  
She goes on to complain about the state of public washrooms (“charging me to use a facility that may or may not give me crabs, seriously?”), the food (“all that pork was enough to make be consider going kosher despite, you know, not being Jewish”), the weather (“don’t you dare say ‘I told you so’, I will physically hurt you”), and the various currencies (“I moved all of five miles and used just as many types of colourful money with ugly dudes on it”).  
  
“The startling level of ethnocentrism in that rant aside,” says Eduardo as he settles into a relatively secluded corner, “how was your trip?”  
  
“Productive,” Suzana says, because she’s succinct except when in tirade mode. “Now tell me what’s been going on with you, because I’ve been in meetings or in transit for the past seventy-two hours and I’ve still heard some crazy shit.”  
  
“Well, first of all, Heather broke up with me for supposedly being gay, so that was a nice way to kick off the week.”  
  
“Good riddance, Heather has the emotional stability of a yo-yo. As have most of your girlfriends, actually, aside from the ones who were just total bitches.”  
  
“That’s not true! I’ve had plenty of nice girlfriends. There was…” It should not be taking him nearly this long to think of someone. “…Aya!”  
  
“The nerdy one you dumped after three weeks, saying you were better off as friends?”  
  
“We are better off as friends, and I don’t think anyone who speaks Klingon has the right to call someone else a nerd.”  
  
“You’re just bitter about having to go to that convention with me, because of the really very minor accident with the Vulcan ears which you completely overreacted to. It’s not like it was a big fire.”  
  
“You swore you would never mention that again!” Eduardo hisses, because there is bitter and then there is scarred for life.  
  
“Fine, fine, drama queen.” There’s a pause, and Eduardo’s stomach clenches, because he knows Suzana, and she’s going to stop joking around any moment now and make him talk. “I know you’re not that upset about Heather. But you must be upset about everything else.”_

_“I’m upset that half of my clientele seems to be comprised of homophobic douchebags and that everyone I know or have ever known since middle school now feels compelled to call me up and tell me they’re not surprised I’m gay, since apparently everyone buys into stereotypes about good looks and hair care and the ability to colour coordinate -”  
  
“Eduardo. Fique tranquilo. Or take a breath, at least.”  
  
He tries to comply without hyperventilating, but it’s difficult when he’s going to be on a plane in less than an hour that’s going to take him to Palo Alto. To Facebook. To Mark.  
  
“What are you planning to do about Zuckerberg?”  
  
“Chris is handling it.”  
  
“The same Chris who claims to be your friend but kept working for the guy who stabbed you in the back?”  
  
“It’s not that simple, Suzy. Chris was friends with Mark too, and he didn’t know what he was up to beforehand, and – we’ve talked about this already.”  
  
“Yes,” Suzana agrees in a tone that makes it clear she doesn’t agree at all. But then, she’s never met Chris or Mark, let alone been friends with them, and she takes loyalty to a level that borders on psychotic.  
  
“I’m also flying over there to make sure, okay, and not because I don’t trust Chris, but because this shouldn’t all be dumped on his lap and -”  
  
“Wait, wait, wait – you’re flying over there? As in, to California?”  
  
“Yes, because -”  
  
“You’re insane,” Suzana declares. “As in, padded room, straightjacket, Tom Cruise levels of insane. Why in the world would you go there, Eduardo, and now of all times?”  
  
Eduardo explains it to her, everything Chris told him and his own opinion on the matter and need to get this resolved as of yesterday. His explanation only makes her angrier.  
  
“So Zuckerberg is being even more of a passive-aggressive asshole than usual and you’re just going along with it. That’s what you’re telling me.”  
  
Eduardo leans his head against the nearby wall and closes his eyes. He wants to write this off as Suzana being overprotective of him, the same way she was when he told her he was going to start attending the Facebook shareholder meetings, the same way she is about his family. But he can’t discount the possibility that she’s right, because Chris had said outright that he thought Mark might want Eduardo to come, and no one knows better than Eduardo how much Mark excels at passive-aggressive.  
  
Except it’s becoming clear that there’s a lot he didn’t know about Mark and Mark’s attitude towards him and what Mark wanted from him.  
  
And isn’t that something Eduardo didn’t expect to be going through for a second time. Mark just loves to prove him wrong.  
  
Suzana sighs. “Look, Eduardo, just – just remember that you’re not the same person you used to be, okay? You’re not an inexperienced kid any more, and you’re not his friend, you don’t owe him anything and you don’t have to care what he thinks or believes or wants. Okay?”  
  
“Okay.” Eduardo takes a breath he pretends isn’t shaky. “I should head to my gate soon.”  
  
“Oh, that’s what I forgot to tell you about! The airports, all the fucking airports!”  
  
Eduardo listens to Suzana rage against baggage weight limits and security line-ups and even-more-ludicrously-overpriced-than-usual Starbucks and smiles in gratitude. She’s distracting him, because God knows he needs it right now.  
  
\--  
A/N: Please note that any Brazilian Portuguese I use in this fic is from the Internet, so the reliability is dubious. Also, there is apparently some debate about how different/similar the Portuguese of Portugal and the Portuguese dialects of Brazil are, so I stuck strictly to websites that defined the phrases as Brazilian Portuguese. Fique tranquilo = “don’t worry” or “relax”._


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N:_Thank you again to everyone who has commented!  
  
Also, a note on POV – I won’t be writing from Mark’s, and Eduardo’s is obviously very biased. He’s convinced himself of certain things about Mark and interprets everything, past and present, in that light. His perspective should not be taken as my own, or as objectively true.  
\--  
  
Eduardo decides to go to the hotel Ava booked him instead of heading straight for the Facebook offices. He’s jet-lagged and in need of a shower, shave and change of clothes. He’s also a bit nauseous, from airsickness or airplane food, who knows.  
  
Okay, maybe he knows it’s not either, because he doesn’t get airsick and he’s gotten used to stomaching airplane food (he never had an iron stomach like Mark, who once drank expired milk mixed with tequila and didn’t even pause in his coding). He just – he hasn’t felt this anxious about going to Facebook – about seeing Mark – in a long time, and he hates feeling like he’s regressing.  
  
For fuck’s sake, he saw Mark three months ago, and it was fine. He walked into the shareholders’ meeting, he and Mark nodded to each other, and he sat down. End of story.  
  
The meeting before that, they even chatted a little. Eduardo made polite inquiries about how Mark was and how his family was, and Mark stiltedly asked about the weather in Singapore and if he’d read the latest issue of _The Economist_.  
  
Everything had been _fine_.  
  
And now Eduardo is dreading tomorrow, even as he texts Chris to let him know he’s here and asking when would be a good time to come in, and checks his email to confirm with Gretchen that he’ll be sending her firm some paperwork to review shortly.  
  
He falls into a fitful sleep, wakes up from dreams he can’t recall, jerks off perfunctorily, takes a shower, and gets dressed in a three-piece suit he doesn’t remember picking out.  
  
_Thanks for this,_ says a text from Chris. Eduardo ignores the other messages in his Inbox and calls a cab.  
  
He can totally handle this.

He totally cannot handle this.  
  
As an intern leads Eduardo to Mark’s office, everybody _stares_, and it’s a hundred times worse than the first time he attended a shareholders’ meeting. Because now everyone thinks they know the full story instead of bits and pieces and because he’s fairly certain no one has ever wondered before if he’s here to, like, blow Mark in his office or something.  
  
…and, _fuck_, that’s really not the kind of thought he needs to be having, oh let’s see, _ever_.  
  
“Hey, man!” Dustin appears out of nowhere and Eduardo has never been more relieved to see him. “I can take it from here, Jin, why don’t you go back to working on the tagging problem? And the rest of you peons, back to staring at monitors, not shareholders!”  
  
The intern runs off and Eduardo shakes Dustin’s hand. “Thanks.”  
  
He shrugs. “You looked like you could use a rescue, and I figured you probably don’t want to be blushing like that in Mark’s office.” He waggles his eyebrows at this, but something on Eduardo’s face makes him stop quickly. “Too soon?”  
  
“Can we just- where’s Chris?”  
  
“Onto the next step in his descent into madness,” Dustin says as they head off. “I’m starting to worry about him. The other day I found him passed out in his office hugging a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and muttering about ulcers.”  
  
Fuck. If Chris is getting this stressed out, then Eduardo is _doomed_.  
  
“Naturally, I did what any concerned friend would do – took pictures and saved them for future blackmail material.”  
  
“_Dustin_.”  
  
“I said ‘future’, Eduardo, relax, it’s not like I took a _video_ of him and posted it to YouTube, a.k.a. the Enemy That Is Not Quite As Terrible As Twitter. That would be wrong, and also Mark would cut me.”  
  
Eduardo can’t help but laugh, and Dustin grins at him before returning to business.  
  
“You see, Chris got a tip-off from a journalist – some guy is claiming he once slept with you at Harvard, which could obviously undermine us when we say you’re straight.”  
  
“Who?” Though there are very few people it could be. Eduardo had been curious in college but never actually attracted to men, which translated into few attempts to experiment.  
  
Dustin shrugs. “Chris is trying to find out and strike before anything is published. I wouldn’t wait up.”  
  
He comes to a stop and Eduardo glances up to see Mark’s curly head bent over a laptop through the glass pane.  
  
All of a sudden, he’s envying Chris for his Pepto-Bismol. The contents of his stomach have started a revolution.  
  
“Do you, um,” Dustin says, looking somewhere above Eduardo’s shoulder, “want me to come in with you?”  
  
Eduardo isn’t sure whether to be touched or defensive or irritated. He decides on none of the above and shrugs. “You can if you’d like, but I don’t want to take you away from your work.”  
  
Dustin looks him in the eye, that same look he always gets when he feels Eduardo is being too polite to him, too formal, too distant. A mixture of hurt and resignation and resentment. Eduardo has never understood what else he expects.  
  
“Okay,” Dustin says. He reaches out like he means to pat Eduardo on the shoulder, but thinks better of it at the last moment, flailing his hand in the air awkwardly. “See you later then.”  
  
“Take care,” Eduardo says, and then walks into Mark’s office without knocking. It’s ruder than he cares to be, but Mark has his headphones on and his assistant is nowhere in sight.  
  
He takes a seat in one of the two leather chairs in front of Mark’s desk and pulls out his iPhone, deciding to attend to some emails while he waits for Mark to surface. The typing stops and the headphones are dumped onto the desktop quicker than he would have expected, but then, Eduardo hasn’t spent much time around Mark in years, is no longer familiar with his habits.  
  
He glances up and Mark is staring at him. He looks the same as he did at the last shareholders’ meeting, almost the same as he did in college. Blank-faced and sharp around the edges, with eyes that are eerily intense on whatever they focus upon.  
  
Eduardo, realizing that he’s staring back, blinks and says, “Hi, Mark.”  
  
“Hi.” Mark continues to look at him with bright, unblinking eyes, like those snakes that can hypnotize their prey.

“If you have work to finish, I can wait.” Eduardo gestures with his phone.  
  
Mark jerks his head, a poor imitation of how other people would shake theirs. “I have some work to finish up, but you – it can wait.” He closes his laptop and folds his hands on top. He hasn’t looked away from Eduardo once.  
  
“Chris says you haven’t approved any press statements.”  
  
“Most of his drafts are wildly dishonest.” One corner of Mark’s lips lifts in a ghost of a smile. “Politics have obviously corrupted him.”  
  
“He emailed me a few to review. I’m fine with any of them.”  
  
Mark stops semi-smiling. “They aren’t true.”  
  
“Neither are 99 percent of the stories out there about us right now, Mark. We – you need to say something to combat that, before this gets even worse.”  
  
Mark’s fingers twitch on top of his laptop, spider-like. He slides them off and shoves them into the pocket of his hoodie. “You haven’t presented any suggestions as to what I should say.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eduardo says, trying not to sound exasperated. “Say the guy is lying for publicity, or for a failed extortion attempt, or for revenge because he was dumped over Facebook on Valentine’s Day. Just say _something_, Mark.”  
  
“Lie.”  
  
“Do what’s best for Facebook.”  
  
Mark raises his eyebrows at the euphemistic language, or maybe at the even tone, or at Eduardo’s presumption that he has any idea what’s best for Facebook. “Lie,” he repeats, stubborn.  
  
Eduardo bites back the first few retorts that spring to mind. _Because deception is so novel to you_, or _repeat what we both did during the Winklevoss suit_, or _stop being a dick on purpose_. He can’t say any of those things, he can’t be emotional, he can’t –  
  
“Repeat what we both did during the Winklevoss suit,” he says, because apparently his mouth has a will of its own.  
  
Mark’s eyes narrow. “We _didn’t_ lie.”  
  
_We didn’t tell the whole truth either,_ Eduardo thinks, though he’s sure Mark would adamantly disagree. “No more than we’d be lying if we say that this guy is a greedy, fame-seeking con artist and that the media is spreading pure fiction.”  
  
“He isn’t lying, though.”  
  
“Then say there’s some other guy named Eduardo -”  
  
Mark snorts. “The more lies you come up with, the less believable they become.”  
  
“That’s a symptom of something you might be unfamiliar with called a conscience,” Eduardo snaps, only to regret it instantly. Especially when Mark looks pleased just as instantly.  
  
He’s trying to provoke him, Eduardo knows, but he has no idea why.  
  
He always hated how apathetic Mark acted during the depositions – as if it was all so beneath his notice, Eduardo’s friendship and Eduardo’s pain and Eduardo _himself_, none of it anything more than a nuisance. Eduardo has never been sure if it was genuine or a façade intended to hurt him. He’s not sure which is worse.  
  
“So your plan is to say nothing.”  
  
“As usual, you’re jumping to extreme conclusions based on inadequate data and flawed assumptions.”  
  
Eduardo gets a feeling almost like déjà vu, like they’re having two conversations at once and he’s deaf to the second one. But Mark never spoke in subtext before, and Eduardo doesn’t try to interpret any now, doesn’t read meaning into places where there’s none, he _won’t_. That part of his life is over, and he won’t regress.  
  
“I don’t think,” Eduardo says, adjusting his cufflinks, “that you’re in any position to know what is ‘usual’ behaviour for me, Mark.” He glances away from Mark and then back so that he doesn’t have to see his reaction or lack thereof. “You’ve told me what you won’t say, but not what you will say.”  
  
“I’ll say it’s private.”  
  
“You of all people know how little privacy exists these days.”  
  
“I created privacy controls, Eduardo; it’s not my fault the general public is too stupid to use them properly. I have no intention of revealing more of my personal life than has already been exposed. Especially –”  
  
Mark pauses, and this catches Eduardo’s attention more than anything else. Mark rarely hesitates, is almost never unsure of anything, and shows it even more rarely still. He swallows, throat working under the worn collar of his hoodie, before resuming.  
  
“I especially don’t have to explain myself when people won’t believe the truth.”

Mark is probably right. The public will choose to believe the more scandalous story.  
  
Eduardo sighs and runs a hand across his face. “Fuck, you’re right. At this point, we’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t make a damn movie about a tragic love story that never happened.” He glances over, expecting Mark to be smug or maybe blasé about Eduardo conceding his point.  
  
But Mark is staring down at his desktop, biting hard into his bottom lip.  
  
(Eduardo abruptly remembers Chris uncharacteristically fumbling his words, _“maybe he, um, wants you to give your input on it…”_)  
  
Mark clears his throat. “Yeah, um, that would be lame. Even I wouldn’t watch a movie of people coding for two hours.”  
  
Eduardo almost laughs. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood and stares at Mark’s desk. He wonders how long that can of Mountain Dew has been sitting there. He wonders if there’s anyone around here who occasionally brings Mark something to drink or eat that isn’t over-processed and filled with sugar.  
  
“Look, I’ll sign off on whatever statement you want,” Eduardo blurts eventually, mostly to break the silence. “Just approve one already.”  
  
Mark is staring at him again, he can feel it. In his peripheral vision, Eduardo can see that Mark bit too hard too, making his chapped bottom lip bleed a little.  
  
“Will you read it first?”  
  
Eduardo’s eyes snap back to Mark’s as if magnetized. “I’ll have my lawyers read it.”  
  
“Prudent,” Mark fires back.  
  
“_Thank you_.”  
  
“I only stated a fact. You’re overreaching with the politeness.”  
  
“Because you’re such an expert on the subject.”  
  
“I’ve never wasted my time on irrelevant things.”  
  
“Most people don’t consider basic human decency to be irrelevant.”  
  
“Most people are idiots.”  
  
This is starting to feel less like arguing and more like banter. Eduardo stands up so abruptly that the chair almost tips over. “I should probably let you get back to work.”  
  
“Probably.” Mark blinks twice, and Eduardo doesn’t try to decipher what that might mean.  
  
“Have a good -”  
  
“Singapore,” Mark says.  
  
Eduardo pauses in his attempt to turn away. “Pardon?”  
  
“Singapore has, um, some strange laws. I’ve heard. The whole…” Mark flaps a hand around in the air vaguely. “…the gum thing, and caning as an actual, official sentence. Insert the appropriate joke about kangaroo courts and proximity to Australia here.”  
  
…is Mark attempting to make _small talk_?  
  
Maybe Eduardo is hallucinating. Maybe he’s entered the twilight zone. Either would explain a lot of recent events.  
  
Mark is staring at his desk again and hunching his shoulders. “Um, Chris also mentioned some very antiquated law about…that’s actually how he described it too, ‘antiquated’, the guy’s clearly spent too much time with professional speech writers…but the law, it. It’s. The one about gay sex.” His gaze flickers back to Eduardo and then back down again. “Has that been a problem for you?” he asks stiffly.  
  
“Not until recently.” _And what do you care anyway?_ “Seeing as I’m straight.”  
  
Mark finally meets his eyes again. “I know that.”  
  
Eduardo doesn’t know what to make of Mark’s tone, and he doesn’t want to.  
  
“But Chris said you were having some problems because of it.”  
  
“The law itself won’t be a problem; I haven’t done anything I can be arrested for. But a lot of people in Singapore, including some of my clients, are not very comfortable with homosexuality.”  
  
“I don’t understand why you live there. It’s backward.”  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo says sharply. He’s not sure if he’s reprimanding him for saying something offensive, or because they both know full well why Eduardo moved to the other side of the world. “There are plenty of places where homophobia is common -”  
  
“But most places don’t have _laws_ to enforce it, it’s ludicrous, you live on another continent, not in another historical era. You should move. You should move somewhere more progressive. Like here. Or Europe, I guess, but the women don’t shave their armpits there, that’s not a myth, and the taxes are pretty -”  
  
“I’m not moving anywhere. Is there a point to this conversation?”  
  
“Yes. I don’t speak without having a point. What would be the point?”  
  
“Then arrive at it, please.”

Strangely, Mark doesn’t glare at him or passive-aggressively avoid answering. “It wasn’t intentional.”  
  
It’s Eduardo who looks away this time, his face suddenly hot and the door suddenly very appealing. Why _he’s_ the embarrassed one here is beyond him.  
  
“I’m not – I mean, I don’t know exactly what Chris said to you, but I’m not – I wasn’t staying quiet because I wanted to cause problems for you. Or something.”  
  
Mark sounds extremely ill at ease, and it’s not an apology, but it is an acknowledgement. Back in college, Mark occasionally granted him that much, a small admission that his words were mean or that he’d forgotten to check the time or that Eduardo’s movie choices weren’t _always_ terrible. That had been enough for Eduardo, then.  
  
It will have to do, now.  
  
“Okay,” he says, nodding at Mark before heading for the door.  
  
“Eduardo.”  
  
Eduardo pauses and pivots in the doorway, gritting his teeth, but manages to sound somewhat calm. “What?”  
  
“It wasn’t intentional,” Mark says again. He leans forward in his seat, expression blank but gaze intense, far too intense. “But I’m not _ashamed_ either.” He sits back then, opening his laptop again. “You can go now.”  
  
For several seconds, Eduardo stands, suspended on the threshold of Mark’s office, gaping. Inanely, he wonders if he resembles a trout or a marlin.  
  
And then he steps back inside, slamming the door behind him.  
  
“Of course you’re not ashamed, you’re _incapable_ of that degree of emotion,” he says, voice low and full of a fury he feels all the way to his fingertips. “And if it wasn’t intentional, Mark, then why am I here?”  
  
Mark isn’t looking at his computer anymore. “Why _are_ you here, Eduardo?”  
  
“Because you were refusing to say anything!”  
  
“And you thought you could persuade me to do something I didn’t want to do?”  
  
Eduardo lets himself laugh this time. There is nothing resembling joy or amusement in the sound. “No. No, I was cured of that delusion a long time ago. But you obviously have some kind of point to make to me, so why don’t you stop pretending that this has anything to do with principles or concern for my problems, and just fucking make the point?”  
  
“I’ve already made it. You haven’t been paying attention to the right things.”  
  
Eduardo’s chest feels too full, his ribcage too tight. Because of course Mark has to make this as difficult as possible, of course he does. Eduardo doesn’t know how he could possibly think he would do anything else. Mark never makes anything easy for anyone, least of all Eduardo.  
  
Of course he’s going to force him to think about this, about what it means.  
  
“Mark,” he says, and his voice is shaking, he _loathes_ himself sometimes, “if you’re planning to sit here and tell me that part of the reason you fucked me over was because you wanted to fuck me and never got to, I may actually kill you.”  
  
Mark stares at him silently for so long that Eduardo starts to think Mark isn’t going to stop at making him say it out loud, he’s going to make him _ask_ about it too. But then, slowly, deliberately, Mark shrugs. That _fuck you_ shrug Eduardo remembers so very well from the depositions.  
  
Eduardo has to walk away. He has to. Because his hands are shaking too now and he’s a hairsbreadth away from losing control and he doesn’t know what he would do if he lost it, only that it would be much worse than smashing a laptop.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N:_ This is mostly a transitional chapter, to move the plot along, so the next update should follow within a couple of days.  
  
Thank you to everyone who’s commented! :)  
\--  
  
Eduardo comes stalking out of Mark’s office, and Dustin has a horrible sensation of déjà vu, his stomach dropping like he’s on a plane with bad turbulence, or has had Thai food that spent too much time in the sun.  
  
Then Eduardo pauses at his desk, just stands there and _seethes_ at him, and Dustin’s stomach plummets into his feet.  
  
“You wanna get out of here for a bit?” Eduardo asks.  
  
A muscle in his cheek is twitching, so Dustin decides it’s best to go along with whatever he wants. And to not make any sudden movements.  
  
“Uh, sure,” he says, and shoots a look at his assistant as he goes. Paul knows him well enough at this point to read the message loud and clear: _if I’m not back in an hour, make sure Chris gives the eulogy_.  
  
Eduardo is completely silent all the way out of the building, into the parking lot, and on the drive to a nearby café. Dustin is terrified, because he knows that ‘it’s always the quiet ones’ thing is bull shit; it’s the nice ones you really have to watch. He’s seen _Carrie_, okay?  
  
“You’re not going to go postal, are you?” he blurts. “I’m too young to die, and also I haven’t finished watching the latest season of _Doctor Who_ yet, and Chris would miss me, no matter what he says, and the Facebook offices are not a postal office, even if we pretty much single-handedly made mail obsolete, so really -”  
  
“I’m fine,” Eduardo says, and he sounds perfectly calm, which is just, like, _red fucking alert_, because Eduardo and calm go together like Ozzy Osbourne and coherent speech.  
  
Except Eduardo remains calm as they enter the café, even with camera flashes coming at them from the bushes. Dustin orders a green tea with three sugars, and Eduardo orders some pretentious variety of coffee, double-this, half-that, non-fat, no whip, et cetera.  
  
“Non-fat, Wardo, really? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you don’t have any spare weight to lose. Except maybe in your hair.”  
  
“Shut up, my hair is awesome,” Eduardo says, and Dustin relaxes a little, because Eduardo being ridiculous about his equally ridiculous hair is normal. “I prefer skim milk for the protein, not for the lack of fat.”  
  
“If you’re going to talk about _nutrition_,” Dustin says, making sure to fill the word with all the nightmare fuel it deserves, “this ends here and now.” Fortunately, Eduardo laughs and his posture relaxes even more, which was pretty much the point. “Be honest; you’re just worried about losing your bishōnen looks as you near thirty.”  
  
“My what?”  
  
“Oh God, you don’t watch anime or read manga even though you live in Asia?”  
  
“I live in _Singapore_, not _Japan_, and I think both are popular around the world anyway.”  
  
“Whatever, dude, you’re clearly deprived. I’ll email you some stuff. I think you’d like _Naruto_, and you’re a drama queen, so definitely _Neon Genesis Evangelion_…”  
  
Eduardo huffs in irritation. “I don’t know why everyone keeps calling me that.”  
  
“Uh…maybe because they’ve _met_ you?”  
  
They settle into amicable conversation, and Dustin stops worrying about the possibility of Mark fucking with his obituary because he got himself murdered and Eduardo arrested for it, and Chris going completely off the deep end trying to handle yet another scandal. It’s nice, being able to talk to Eduardo again, even if it’s not the same as it used to be. They never used to have conversational land mines to avoid, or topics considered too personal to discuss.  
  
“So, since you’re in town for a while this time instead of fleeing the land immediately after a meeting concludes, you should invite your girlfriend over. My approval means just as much as Chris’s!”  
  
Dustin knows he fails Stealthy Information Gathering forever in everything but hacking, but he also knows Eduardo gets an epic fail in Noticing The Obvious, so he figures he’s good.  
  
“I don’t have a girlfriend. There was a woman I was seeing, but after the whole media circus that has taken over my life…” Eduardo shrugs, taking a sip of his French/Italian/Indian/diet thing that has no right to be called coffee anymore.

He doesn’t seem that upset, which doesn’t surprise Dustin. When he was younger, Dustin leapt at a chance with anyone female; he also went through a phase when it was kind of cool to have gorgeous women hanging all over him, even if they were only interested in his wallet. But Dustin isn’t a kid anymore and now he only dates when he genuinely likes a woman.  
  
Strangely, though Eduardo was always the Nice GuyTM of their group, the one who was into buying thoughtful gifts and planning candlelit dinners, he’s always been kind of…well, _shallow_, when it comes to his dating life. He dated girls who were hot and fun, and he never treated them like anything less than royalty, but he never got all that emotionally invested in them either. As far as Dustin can tell, Eduardo has always saved his emotional investing (or over-investing, in one case that no one would need three guesses to get) for his friends.  
  
Confirmation of single status obtained (_this would be so much easier if Eduardo would just update his Facebook like a normal person_), Dustin moves on.  
  
\--  
  
Because Eduardo has the self-preservation instincts of a particularly suicidal lemming next to a particularly steep cliff, when he gets back to his hotel suite, he Googles himself.  
  
There are news articles and tabloid tales, speculation on Valleywag, debates on Tumblr. Everything in Eduardo’s history with Mark is being twisted into either an epic star-crossed romance or a twenty-first century version of _Dangerous Liaisons_. The number of jokes about them involving the Facebook poking feature is astounding.  
  
Eduardo skims some other articles, and pauses on one that has a picture of Mark…in a suit. It’s just…jarring. Mark has taken to wearing slightly more formal clothing than his usual hoodie, sweatpants and flip-flops when he’s in public or at a meeting, but for Mark, ‘formal’ means running shoes, jeans and, very occasionally, an actual dress shirt (Eduardo assumes that Chris and threats of dismemberment are involved).  
  
It looks good on him.  
  
Eduardo flushes at the thought, at the realization that he’s about two inches from his laptop screen, staring at a picture of his ex-best friend. He pulls back immediately.  
  
It’s just the surprise of seeing Mark dressed like a grown-up instead of a slovenly, sullen teenager, Eduardo tells himself. After all, the suit is not particularly fashionable or exceptional in any way – it’s not Dunhill or Simon Spurr or Armani, Zegna or D&G or Tom Ford. It’s not fitted well enough to be bespoke – the jacket’s a bit long in the arms, a bit tight in the shoulders, like maybe Mark’s taken up fencing again, and –  
  
And Eduardo should really not be noticing _how well Mark’s clothes fit him_. Or don’t, as the case may be. Except now he’s picturing Mark without _any_ clothes on and that’s – that’s – that’s just –  
  
Proof Eduardo needs to call his therapist, for one.  
  
Eduardo is flashing back to _The Simpsons_ now, to Homer cursing “stupid sexy Flanders” with his skintight ski uniform.  
  
Oh God. He’s having a Stupid Sexy Flanders moment because of _Mark_. He doesn’t need therapy, he needs a fucking _noose_.  
  
Eduardo glares at the picture. That suit was clearly made by _Satan_.  
  
He checks his email. Ava has been keeping an eye on things in the office for him, including on the politics. Eduardo is unsurprised to learn that there’s been some concern among Board members about the attention he’s been getting, and he would be more surprised if there _weren’t_ people trying to exploit this. Fortunately, he has Ava – whose competence and efficiency sometimes make him wonder if she isn’t here to kill John Connor – and he has a golden parachute.  
  
Still, he _likes_ his job, and his company, and until Mark opened his big mouth, he had been anticipating moving up relatively soon. There’s talk of opening another international office and Eduardo was favoured to be the regional VP leading the expansion.  
  
That might not happen now.  
  
Eduardo refuses to let that possibility psych him out. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work. He should be able to make a dent in his emails and review a few proposals by midnight, and then talk to the publicist handling the media mess in Singapore.

\--

Chris has to make a concerted effort not to slam the phone down so hard it shatters. Of course, he should know better than to think he could reason with _Fox News_. Hopefully they’ll take the people from Legal more seriously before running a piece about Facebook’s “gay agenda” and the President’s possible connections to it.  
  
He leaves his temporary office, heading for Mark’s, and checking his watch. Shit. The time he’d given Eduardo was three hours ago. Hopefully –  
  
The train of thought – along with his path – is cut off when Dustin grabs him in a half-hug, half-flying tackle that nearly tips them both into a potted plant. _Doris’s_ potted plant. She scowls at them both over her horn-rim, neon pink glasses.  
  
“Sorry, Doris,” Dustin says immediately. “We’ll be much more careful in the future!” He grins nervously and basically shoves Chris back towards his office.  
  
Chris doesn’t stop him. Doris’s office nickname is _Nurse Ratched_.  
  
Once back in his office, though, he smacks Dustin’s hand away from his arm. “Okay, enough with the manhandling.”  
  
“Isn’t that right up your alley? _Literally_, right up -”  
  
“Not enough brain bleach _in the world_ for me to hear you finish that sentence, Dustin.”  
  
Dustin clutches a hand to his heart, romance novel heroine-style. “You wound me.”  
  
“Not yet.” Chris narrows his eyes. Dustin may still be cracking jokes, but (1) he looks a bit strained around the eyes, (2) despite appearances, Dustin is in fact a professional, and wouldn’t interrupt Chris while he’s working without good cause, and (3) Dustin will be cracking jokes while the world ends, and then pouting about the cockroaches and Keith Richards being a ‘tough crowd’. “What happened?”  
  
“Eduardo was here. He talked to Mark. He stormed out. Mark’s having a hissy fit. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.”  
  
“Fuck.” When this is all over, he is going on a goddamn spa _year_ retreat. On Mark’s dime.  
  
“Don’t worry, though, I took Eduardo out for coffee and calmed him down.” Dustin frowns. “Actually…he more or less calmed himself down. Which doesn’t seem…” He turns to Chris with wide eyes. Wider than should be humanly possible. “Oh shit, Chris, maybe Eduardo is secretly plotting Mark’s death! Revenge served frosty!”  
  
“Have you been smoking pot?”  
  
“No! God, you get _slightly_ paranoid _one time_ in college -”  
  
“You made me type out your plan for hacking Skynet,” Chris reminds him, “because you didn’t want the Girl Guides to suck your thoughts out from your fingers through the keyboard and use them as cookie filling.”  
  
Dustin slumps onto the couch and crosses his arms sullenly. “It’s not my fault Billy bought the world’s most contaminated weed.”  
  
Chris doesn’t want to think about that, because while it’s funny in the retelling, at the time, he was legitimately concerned Dustin accidentally ingested PCP or something. That was the first time he’d had a friend throw up on him, but not the last, unfortunately.  
  
(Thank _God_ Eduardo had never gotten into drugs. The drinking was bad enough, that last year at Harvard.)  
  
“So Eduardo calmed down after Mark…said whatever he said. Good, because I need him back here tomorrow to green light a press statement.”  
  
Even as he says it and starts strategizing, he feels a bit queasy. Eduardo stormed out. It’s possible Dustin is exaggerating, but Chris doubts it. For Eduardo to break his self-imposed doctrine of ultra-politeness where Mark is concerned, whatever was said had to be pretty bad. He debates giving him a call, but decides not to. The time when Eduardo would talk to him about Mark is long past, and even then, Chris never mistook it for anything other than the simple fact that he had no one else to talk to.  
  
(_“I know the lawsuit must have been hard,”_ he’d said, after. _“Mark’s been binge-coding and terrorizing the employees again, and obsessing over getting Erica Albright – remember her? – to accept his friend request -”_ And Eduardo had cut him off, cold in a way Chris hadn’t thought, could never have imagined, he was capable of being: _“I don’t know why you’re telling me any of this, Chris.”_  
  
They’d never discussed Mark in anything but a purely professional manner since.)

“You gonna call him?” Dustin asks, because he’s always had an uncanny ability to tap into what Chris is thinking.  
  
“No. I’ll text him about rescheduling, but – no, it’s best I don’t call him now, if he’s still…in that mood.”  
  
Dustin gives him a puzzled look that communicates as clearly as words: _but you guys are friends._  
  
“It’s complicated,” Chris says, which is kind of a Captain Obvious statement, all things considered. “Just…Eduardo and I talk about pretty much everything except Mark.”  
  
“Has it always been that way?” Dustin asks, speaking at a normal person’s speed and in a normal tone for once, which Chris knows means he feels uneasy asking, like maybe he doesn’t have a right to.  
  
“No. Since after the lawsuit.”  
  
“Hmm. I get the feeling a lot of really fucked up shit went down during that thing.”  
  
“No kidding.”  
  
“Okay.” Dustin leaps off the couch like a jack-in-the-box. “Enough of this; we’ll end up, like, gazing at rain on window panes and crying into handkerchiefs if we keep it up.”  
  
“Handkerchiefs? Where are we, in the Victorian era?”  
  
“I will bet you a million dollars that Eduardo has at least one. Probably silk and monogrammed.”  
  
“…I refuse to take that bet.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. One, two, three, four, I declare a _Star Wars_ marathon!”  
  
“That doesn’t even rhyme.”  
  
Dustin looks at him like _he’s_ the weird one, instead of the only person even semi-associated with Facebook who wouldn’t make psychiatrists either start to salivate or start to sweat. “Uh…why would it rhyme, Christopher? We work for Doctor Doom, not Doctor Seuss.”  
  
“That’s…a disturbingly apt comparison.”  
  
Dustin beams at him.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N:_ Hopefully, lj won’t be glitchy again and this part won’t disappear and reappear repeatedly. Especially considering that it ended up longer than I meant it to. Mark and Eduardo just would not shut up.  
\--  
  
Eduardo wakes up in the middle of the night with a hard-on again. Clearly his body is not used to the time difference yet. He tugs down his boxers and shuts his eyes, planning the quickest route to come and then go back to sleep.  
  
But as he’s trying to imagine a scenario he and an ex-girlfriend once role-played, the secretary beneath the desk during a meeting, he thinks of Mark, and Mark’s office, and all the stares that followed him on his way there.  
  
_Not the time,_ Eduardo reminds himself, shaking his head. He imagines knees against a plush carpet, a tight skirt riding up on stocking-clad thighs, fingernails lightly scraping his legs. He pictures a plush mouth, the bottom lip being bitten into just hard enough to bleed-  
  
Like Mark’s.  
  
_Fuck,_ Eduardo thinks, his eyes popping open in the dark.  
  
Okay, okay, so he’s probably overreacting. He’s only thinking about Mark because he saw him yesterday, and because of the thing with the suit, and because he’s had to hear far too much about Mark’s sex life recently. That’s all it is. He just has to focus.  
  
He can’t ever recall having trouble focusing on jerking off before, but this is neither here nor there.  
  
Eduardo shuts his eyes again and concentrates on the memory of him and Jenny, with a few embellishments. He starts stroking himself, imagining her mouth on him, imagining his fingers in her curls, imagining her sliding a hand down her stomach to touch herself, beneath the band of her sweatpants and into her boxers-  
  
_Oh shit, not again._ Eduardo tears his hand away like he’s been burnt.  
  
This cannot be happening to him. He cannot seriously be conflating his gorgeous ex-girlfriend with Mark. In a sexual fantasy. While masturbating. This simply cannot be real life.  
  
Eduardo lets out a hysterical laugh and rubs a hand across his face, because now he’s thinking about the things he’s been trying desperately hard not to think about since reading that very first article online. He’s thinking about Mark getting sucked off by some guy and saying _his_ name, imagining that Eduardo was the one doing it. He’s thinking about Mark getting sucked off by Erica Albright or Christy’s friend Alice and biting his lip bloody trying _not_ to say his name.  
  
He’s thinking about Mark lying in his bed somewhere not too far from here, jerking off to the fantasy of Eduardo’s mouth on him, or his mouth on Eduardo, maybe in his office earlier, Eduardo’s come on his bottom lip instead of blood –  
  
Eduardo leaps out of the bed and runs into the bathroom, afraid he’s going to throw up. Not because the images in his mind disgust him, but because they _don’t_, because they should but they don’t, because he’s still hard somehow even as he’s angry and weirded out.  
  
He should really call his therapist.  
  
Instead, he takes a cold shower and tries not to consider drowning himself too seriously.  
  
\--  
  
By morning, Eduardo has calmed down. It’s just the stress and the bizarreness of the situation getting to him, he’s sure. Crossed wires. He’s been trying too hard not to think about Mark and sex, and his subconscious is retaliating for all that suppression. It’s no big deal, he’ll get over it soon.  
  
Which means he has no reason to feel nervous – _again_ – about going to Mark’s office.  
  
None at all.  
  
Eduardo gets dressed with brisk efficiency. He pulls on silk socks, boxer briefs, and an undershirt. The sharply creased pants follow, secured by a leather belt. He buttons his crisply ironed shirt, knots the power tie in a Windsor, slides in the silver cufflinks. Next is the waistcoat over his chest like a breast plate, followed by the jacket. Eduardo shields his eyes with sunglasses – Dior, dark. He slicks back his hair, double-checking that not a single strand is awry from any angle, no flaws visible. He has his phone at his waist, his briefcase in one hand, and a plan for civility and professionalism in his head. He’s ready.

Eduardo’s not sure why he feels immensely relieved, then, when he sees Chris and Dustin already there when Mark’s assistant Nadia waves him in. Aside from the obvious.  
  
“Hey, Chris.”  
  
“Wardo, hey.” Chris stands and gives him a brief one armed-hug. “Sorry about being MIA yesterday and I _wanted_ to pick you up from the airport -”  
  
“Don’t worry about it, I needed to crash at my hotel for a while anyway.” He and Chris sit down in the chairs in front of Mark’s desk. “And you know Ava – she had a driver waiting for me at the gate and the hotel manager personally showing me to my suite.”  
  
“She’s scarily efficient,” Chris agrees. “If she’d ever consider leaving Singapore, I’d steal her off you.”  
  
Eduardo smirks. “You would _try_.”  
  
“Not that this isn’t riveting to listen to,” Mark says flatly, “but weren’t we meeting to discuss matters relevant to Facebook, not your schedule coordination failures?”  
  
Dustin laughs and Chris rolls his eyes at Eduardo. “He’s been like this _all week_.”  
  
“My sympathies,” Eduardo says, only realizing belatedly that he probably should have censored that. People who aren’t friends don’t tease each other, so he shouldn’t be participating in any teasing of Mark.  
  
An image jumps into his mind of teasing Mark with his tongue, making him ask for what he wants, making him _beg_ for it –  
  
Eduardo’s eyes bug and he lets out an involuntary strangled noise, because seriously, _what the fuck is wrong with him?_ He tries to cover it with a cough, but he doubts it’s convincing anyone, since Mark, Chris and Dustin are all staring at him now.  
  
“Excuse me,” he chokes out, coughing again, and hoping they attribute the way his face must be flushing to that.  
  
“Don’t choke to death on your own tongue, dude,” Dustin says, grabbing a can of Mountain Dew off Mark’s desk and extending it to him. “That would be an embarrassing way to go. On the other hand, it’d make an interesting status update for a bystander…”  
  
Eduardo grimaces at the sugary beverage. “Don’t you have any bottled water or coffee or something else that won’t induce cavities and diabetes?”  
  
“Are our beverages not good enough for you, Wardo? I’m _hurt_.”  
  
“No, you aren’t.”  
  
“But it could be arranged,” Mark says coolly.  
  
“I hate to agree with Mark here, but, for one, we should be getting down to business, and for another…Dustin, why are you even here?”  
  
Dustin pouts exaggeratedly at Eduardo, who tries and fails not to laugh. “I swear, it’s like nobody loves me anymore.”  
  
Mark scoffs. “That qualifier is hardly necessary.”  
  
“Let’s focus,” Chris reminds them all. “Mark, shut up, the whole building already knows you’re in a mood, we don’t need reminders…Dustin, just shut up.”  
  
“You don’t scare me,” Mark says.  
  
_Suicidal,_ Dustin mouths at him.  
  
“Oh really? You forget that Nadia likes me better than you. With one word, I could have all your mother’s phone calls coming through until the end of time.”  
  
Mark stares at him. “And you consider yourself the moral one.”  
  
“Experience in politics, Mark, deal with it. Mrs. Zuckerberg says hi by the way, Eduardo. Said she loved that Hanukkah card.”  
  
Eduardo smiles fondly. “Tell her I loved her teiglach recipe and so did Suzana.”  
  
“You’re really getting into cooking, then?” Chris asks. “I thought that was a joke.”  
  
“And yet you sent me a set of cooking books for my last birthday?”  
  
“Gag gift.”  
  
“Ah. Well, thanks anyway. Next time you visit, maybe I’ll cook, have you and Suzy over.”  
  
“Great.” Chris smiles, but it dies a quick death when Mark speaks up.  
  
“I doubt Chris will be able to pull himself away when the President’s approval ratings take an inevitable nose-dive.”  
  
“Careful, Mark,” says Dustin without missing a beat, “your jealousy is showing. Again.”

Mark stiffens, Chris buries his face in his hands, and Eduardo finds the floor fascinating.  
  
_Mark is not jealous,_ he tells himself. _He can’t be._  
  
Number one, what is there to be jealous of? Ordinary chit-chat with Chris and Dustin? That doesn’t even make sense. Number two, that would imply taking something _Dustin_ said seriously. The lack of logic is self-explanatory. Number three, Mark has never needed much provocation to be cruel.  
  
“…holy awkward silences, Batman,” says Dustin.  
  
“Funny,” Mark says, in a tone which implies nothing about this is remotely close to funny, “that you think you’re even capable of observing that sort of thing, Dustin, when you were completely oblivious to it in Chris.”  
  
Eduardo has heard of ‘deafening silences’ before, but this one fucking _echoes_.  
  
And then Dustin is saying, “You can be such a _prick_ sometimes, Mark,” and stalking out of the office.  
  
Chris eyes Mark, equal parts chastising and calculating, shakes his head, and says softly, “I’ll need a few minutes.”  
  
Eduardo watches him go. “Mark -” he says, stops there. It’s not his place to scold Mark anymore, if it ever was. Then again, it is his place to stand up for his friends. But Chris is Mark’s friend too, so maybe they cancel each other out?  
  
Mark is unfazed. “Excuse me, was I not _accurate_?”  
  
“That’s really not the point,” Eduardo says wearily, feeling every minute of the time difference between here and home as he rubs a hand across his face. “Being right is not the be all and end all, Mark.”  
  
Mark looks at Eduardo like he’s speaking Greek. Well, not Greek, Mark can actually understand Greek, or read it at least. Eduardo remembers him translating aloud, one of the few times he was buried in a book instead of code: _“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”_  
  
(Another time, when Eduardo found a dog-eared collection of Neruda’s poems, Mark refused to translate and tetchily snatched the book away. But Eduardo knew enough Spanish to wonder why Mark had underlined lines like _como la planta que no florece_ and _estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada_ and _ya eres mía_, and to wonder why he didn’t bring Erica around more often if he felt that strongly about her. He’d gotten sidetracked from it when Mark admitted that he hadn’t eaten all day, and the two of them went out for pizza.)  
  
Eduardo wonders if Mark still reads, or if his love of literature was yet another thing secondary to, and sacrificed for, Facebook. He wonders why he still cares enough to wonder anything about Mark.  
  
They’re staring at each other again.  
  
For the first time in days, Eduardo is relieved to hear his phone ring. Suzana selected her ringtone herself – the original _Star Trek_ music, naturally. “Hi, Suzy.”  
  
“_Oi, tudo bem_?”  
  
“I’m fine, _e você_?”  
  
“Fantastic. Aside from the fact that somebody called me _your beard_ today, Eduardo. That is so wrong on so many levels, even a math geek like you couldn’t count them.”  
  
Eduardo grins, despite himself. “I’m being called a geek by the woman who dressed up as Uhura for a Halloween party last year? And who still attends Halloween parties, for that matter.”  
  
“Oh, as if you weren’t right there with me, dressed as Captain Reynolds.”  
  
“Infinitely cooler than yours, I don’t care how fantastic your legs look in that uniform.”  
  
“Not that being made fun of in a way that’s utterly hypocritical isn’t loads of fun, but I’d rather talk about what’s up with you and how many of Zuckerberg’s bones I’ll be breaking.”  
  
“I’m fine.” Eduardo’s gaze drifts back to Mark, who is inexplicably glowering at his desktop. “I’m kind of in a meeting right now, actually.”  
  
“And you _answered your phone_?” Suzana sounds incredulous, and rightly so. Eduardo’s manners are usually much better than this.  
  
“Yeah, so I should probably go. I’ll call you later.”  
  
“You’d better. _Tchau_.”

“Sorry about that,” Eduardo says. “But since Chris stepped out -”  
  
“I thought your assistant’s name was Ava,” Mark says, clipped and almost accusing.  
  
“Uh…it is.” Weird. Why would Mark remember his assistant’s name? Or bother to learn it at all, for that matter? “That wasn’t my assistant.”  
  
“And yet one of your complaints to Chris was that I supposedly made your girlfriend dump you. And that claim already had the problem of an erroneous conflation of correlation and cause.”  
  
Eduardo’s first instinct is to snap that he isn’t a liar, Suzana isn’t his girlfriend. But that’s none of Mark’s business. More importantly, he is not going to be dragged into a fight.  
  
“I’m going to have a chat with Chris about gossip,” he says lightly, picking an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve. “Perhaps after he’s in less danger of becoming a Pepto-Bismol addict.”  
  
Mark mouth quirks, petulant the way he always is when he doesn’t get his way. Eduardo braces himself for a vicious remark, for the punishment that always follows when Mark is denied what he wants.  
  
But none comes.  
  
Mark just takes a deep breath and says, “Answering your phone while in a meeting isn’t like you, Eduardo.”  
  
“I _said_ sorry -”  
  
“I was making an observation, I’m not offended. I actually -” Mark pauses – _twice in as many days, it’s like Bizarro Mark_ – and speaks slower than usual, like he’s carefully debating his diction. “I actually, um, kind of – well, more than kind of, and ‘kind of’ is an annoyingly overused and ambiguous term – prefer it when you aren’t. Ridiculously polite, that is.”  
  
If it were anyone else, Eduardo would say he’s blushing a little.  
  
(But he remembers Mark blushing before, when he’d said _“you have no idea what this will mean to my father”_ and Mark said _“sure I do”_, easily, unhesitatingly, even as his ears turned pink. Eduardo remembers biting into his upper lip to hold back a sappy smile, or an _“aww”_ that would have gotten a Red Bull tossed at his head.)  
  
It makes Eduardo feel flushed too, and confused, off-balance, because _this isn’t something they do anymore_ and it didn’t mean anything to Mark even when it was.  
  
“I…I…I am, though,” he finally manages to say. “Ridiculously polite. It’s – it’s who I am.”  
  
“No,” Mark says, matter-of-fact. “It’s who you think you have to pretend to be.”  
  
At that, Eduardo can only stare and try to swallow against the – something – that rises in his chest, fills his throat. Something that both tightens and lets loose, something like flying and falling all at once.  
  
Chris comes back in, making Eduardo blink.  
  
_Shit,_ he thinks. _Shit, pull yourself together._  
  
“…now Dustin is feeling needlessly guilty over ancient and extraordinarily exaggerated history, thanks so much for that, Mark, but he doesn’t need to be at this meeting, so…” Chris trails off, glancing between Eduardo and Mark. “For God’s sake, can’t I leave the two of you alone for five minutes without you regressing into twelve-year-olds?”  
  
Eduardo’s face feels hotter still, but Mark’s reply is swift and steady.  
  
“We’re fine; you’re the one who insists on treating us like children.”  
  
“If you don’t want me to treat you like a child…”  
  
“Yes?” Mark prompts.  
  
“…then stop behaving like one.” Chris frowns. “I thought it was clear where I was going with that one.”  
  
“Clichéville, apparently. I give you far too much credit, sometimes, considering that you’re an arts major.”  
  
Eduardo can’t stop himself from snorting, which makes Chris shift his glare from Mark to him, and Mark look down and smirk. Although Eduardo is fairly certain that smirks don’t usually involve dimples.  
  
_Snap the fuck out of it, Saverin,_ he orders himself. It’s not news that Mark can be funny, all caustic wit that’s amusing as long as it isn’t aimed at you. But it doesn’t matter, because Mark’s other traits outweigh it by a metric ton, and Eduardo can’t put the rose-coloured glasses back on, even if he wanted to.

And so what if Mark made an insightful comment, before? It was probably meant as an insult anyway, a snide shot at how Eduardo had always been so desperate to be liked and how pathetic that made him, always trying to twist himself into what he thought other people wanted him to be, always striving to be perfect and inevitably falling short. There’s no reason for Eduardo to feel – to feel _anything_.  
  
He clears his throat. “So, Chris, you had some draft statements to discuss?”  
  
“Yes,” Chris says, and for some reason he doesn’t look homicidal anymore. He looks sad. “But there’s another issue which Dustin said he mentioned to you the other day. Now, Eduardo, I need you to be completely honest here no matter how uncomfortable it makes you because, frankly, we’re well past that.” He raises both eyebrows at him for emphasis.  
  
“That’s fine.”  
  
“Okay. Did you or did you not have sex with this individual…” He pulls a glossy photo from his briefcase and shows it to Eduardo, turning his back to Mark. “…while at Harvard?”  
  
“Do I want to know why you’re carrying around pictures of random guys in your briefcase?”  
  
Mark is leaning far over in his seat to peek around Chris at the photo, so presumably he’s wondering the same thing.  
  
“It’s not a random guy,” Chris says calmly, ignoring the sound of Mark nearly tipping out of his seat and righting it with a loud bang against the floor and enough arm-flailing to rival Dustin. “It’s a guy who’s been fishing around for the best offer for his tale of hooking up with you senior year. Did you sleep with him?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“What- of course I’m _sure_, is this a cross-examination?”  
  
“And you’re not using some loophole-ridden, technical-virginity sort of definition of sex?”  
  
“What is it you want, Chris, the number of bases?”  
  
Chris pauses, as if seriously contemplating the answer.  
  
“Oh. My. God.”  
  
Eduardo’s kind of expecting to get called out on quoting _Friends_, but Chris is too busy staring at the ceiling and making PR calculations in his head, and Mark is glaring at his laptop. Irritated that he’s being kept away from coding for so long, Eduardo assumes. He probably stopped listening to them a while ago.  
  
“However many bases you rounded with this guy, Wardo,” Chris says, moving away from Mark’s desk to start pacing, “it still doesn’t support your claim to heterosexuality.”  
  
“If politicians are allowed to have smoked pot and not inhaled while in college, why can’t I have experimented a bit without being gay in college?”  
  
“Maybe because the only people who buy the ‘didn’t inhale’ story are children under six and those who prefer Python to PHP or perl,” Mark mutters.  
  
“What Mark said, but with less condescension and likelihood to start a flame war.”  
  
“Look, Chris, I don’t see why it’s all that important anyway. Even if I were gay, it doesn’t automatically follow that I’ve ever been involved with Mark.”  
  
Chris’s principles – _that’s true and saying so would help combat some stereotypes about gay men_ – and his PR sensibilities – _we need to kill as many aspects of this story as possible_ – battle it out across his face.  
  
“You don’t mind people believing you’re not straight, then?” Mark questions, sounding doubtful and annoyed and something else, beneath both. There’s an echo of their friendship in Eduardo still, one that tacks on the part Mark didn’t say: _you only mind if they believe you were ever sleeping with me_.  
  
“I wouldn’t mind at all if it didn’t have an effect on my career,” Eduardo says. And on his dating life, for that matter, but he’ll worry about that later. “But having people believe that Facebook – that we – that –”  
  
(_…that the lawsuit was about that, that you screwed me in more than one way, that I was even more pathetic and moronically trusting than everyone already thought I was…_)  
  
Mark looks at him like there’s maybe an echo in him too and he can hear the things Eduardo doesn’t say. “Yeah,” he murmurs, glancing away.

“Okay,” Chris says, internal war over, “we’re going to say something along the following. First and foremost, your respective private lives have nothing to do with Facebook and you are both surprised and dismayed by the media’s recent behaviour and considering litigation. However, because Facebook shareholders and users have become concerned, you want to be clear that the two of you are not and have never been in a romantic relationship… And, Mark, here’s where it would be best to add that recent claims regarding your personal life -”  
  
“I’m not going to lie.”  
  
“_Mark_ -”  
  
“No. And I’ve never understood what you think saying my name very emphatically will accomplish. Is this Sparta?”  
  
“You’re being unreasonable.”  
  
“Not wanting to be dishonest is unreasonable?”  
  
“I didn’t say that. But you’ve picked a very inconvenient time to be Boolean about the notion of truth.”  
  
“Did you want a gold star for using an elementary computer science term?” Mark deadpans.  
  
Chris throws his hands up like he’s nearing the end of his rope. Eduardo knows how he feels; his own hands are balled into fists.  
  
“Forget Boolean then, and try extreme. And, again, very inconvenient in timing -”  
  
Mark is scoffing and Eduardo is speaking before he recognizes the intent to do so. “Mark’s opinion on the value of honesty varies in direct proportion to how inconvenient it is for me.”  
  
Chris stops talking, and Mark slowly rotates his chair so that he’s looking at Eduardo head-on.  
  
“It _amazes_ me how you assume everything is about how I may or may not feel about you,” he spits, “and yet you always get it _wrong_.”  
  
The words are classic Mark, cutting to the fucking _bone_ – but the tone is off, not detached and derisive. It’s _bitter_, the kind of bitter that bites and burns, the kind Eduardo knows all too well.  
  
“I’m going to get an ulcer,” Chris groans. “Before I’m _thirty_. And not even from the GOP, oh no, because that would make far too much sense…”  
  
“I’m wrong,” Eduardo repeats. “Well, of course I am, Mark, because God knows you’re _always_ right. So right, in fact, that you don’t even need to explain _anything_, _ever_ -”  
  
“If you paid attention instead of selectively hearing -”  
  
“Right, _I’m_ the one who never pays attention -”  
  
“- and interpreting everything to go along with your martyr’s vision of the world -”  
  
“- to anything besides a goddamn computer -”  
  
“- you would know that I’ve already tried to explain multiple fucking times, Wardo. You would know what I’ve been trying to say.”  
  
“Maybe I do, I just don’t give a shit,” Eduardo says nastily, because _how dare he_, how dare he act as if everything was Eduardo being dramatic and misunderstanding, and not Mark being a back-stabbing asshole, as if he has any right to call him Wardo now, or to speak to him at all.  
  
And Mark – Mark _flinches_. His mouth opens, but no invective comes out, nothing comes out at all.  
  
Eduardo should probably feel guilty about that. Instead, he feels a mixture of triumph and bitterness, so powerful he’s almost sick with it.  
  
“Um,” says Chris, and Eduardo blinks at him. He’d forgotten there was anyone else there. “Maybe we should get back to the, you know, actual purpose of this meeting -”  
  
“I’m not fucking lying, Chris, so drop it.”  
  
“You just have to make everything difficult, don’t you?” Eduardo says. “You don’t even realize how – how lucky you are, for one, that I even agreed to come here and go along with this, that I’m doing you a _favour_ here. You feel entitled to it, after all, as if I couldn’t have just ignored it, or – or talked to the press, for that matter. Told them the truth right away.”  
  
“I know you don’t pay attention to important documents that you sign, Eduardo, but there’s this little thing called an NDA -”  
  
Eduardo laughs unpleasantly. “You’d sue me for pushing its boundaries a little? I would _love_ to see that, Mark – you trying to persuade a jury that _I’ve_ done _you_ wrong. Because I’d let it go to trial, I wouldn’t be such a coward that I’d settle -”  
  
“Fuck you, Eduardo, you’re the one whose lawyers suggested and drew up the settlement in the first place, and you signed off on it more easily than I did.”

Eduardo remembers that; oh, how he remembers it. Even at the end of the depositions, after Eduardo bled himself dry for their lawyers, Mark _still_ had to make things hard, nit-picking at the draft settlement Gretchen proposed.  
  
To this day, Eduardo doesn’t know what it was Mark objected to – the percentage of shares, the amount of money, the two-way NDA, or, most painful and probable of all, the recognition of Eduardo as a co-founder.  
  
“I signed off,” he says through gritted teeth, “because it was the only way to get what I was owed and still maintain a modicum of privacy. Now, the latter’s gone to shit, thanks to you, so I don’t know why I should even bother trying to help Facebook -”  
  
“So _now_ you’re concerned about Facebook? Now, when it doesn’t matter, but not back when -”  
  
“As if you _ever_ thought my opinion mattered once you’d gotten the money -”  
  
“- but you still don’t give a shit,” Mark cuts him off, rapid-fire and rancorous, “not really, you’re only worried about yourself and how this makes you look to the business world and to gold-digging women and, most of all, to dear old _dad_, because you’re still under the delusion that you’ll ever be anything but a disappointment.”  
  
Eduardo sucks in a sharp breath, shocked for a moment that even Mark would go there.  
  
And then he finds what little self-control he had left slip away, lost to his temper, because Mark just crossed the fucking line. Eduardo starts talking, starts striking anywhere he thinks might hurt, might give Mark the smallest taste of his own medicine.  
  
“If it were only me I was concerned about, then I would have talked to the press. I’d have told them that I have no idea why you’d say my name in bed, because I certainly would _never_ have slept with you or even thought of you that way, and because it’s so fucking _pathetic_ of you -”  
  
“I don’t think anyone thinks _I’m_ the pathetic one of the Facebook founders,” Mark says, but he’s gone white, and Eduardo doesn’t stop.  
  
“I’d tell them it’s pathetic that it’s been _years_ and you’re still thinking about how you never got to fuck me, and how you never will, how you’re so fucking _desperate_ for it that you’d fantasize while you’re with someone with big enough dollar signs in his eyes to actually get into bed with you -”  
  
“Eduardo,” Chris says, shocked, and Eduardo finally stops, swallowing down whatever other bile he might have spewed, shaking with fury and maybe with something else.  
  
He looks away from Mark, who is drained of all colour, but will surely recover soon, lash out, hit back harder, hurt back more, because that’s how it goes with the two of them.  
  
“Look,” says Chris, a rare note of genuine anger slipping into his voice, “if you two want to keep acting like assholes, go right ahead, but I am _done_ listening to it. You will conclude our business now, and after – do what you want, I don’t care, I can’t – I can’t _do this again_. I won’t. Understood?”  
  
Eduardo shuts his eyes, exhausted and vaguely nauseous. “Yes,” he says, but he doesn’t apologize, doesn’t take anything back, doesn’t lie.  
  
And he doesn’t look at Mark again.  
  
\--  
The line Mark quotes is from _The Iliad_. The lines from Pablo Neruda’s _Cien Sonetos de Amor_ are respectively from Sonnet XVII, Sonnet XI and Sonnet LXXXI.  
  
As for Mark’s remark about programming languages – please don’t flame me! My own knowledge of programming is very limited and very old, and in none of the languages I mentioned; the comment was based on what some friends of mine who are in computer science have said, and on comments made by the co-founder of Quora (and former Facebook employee) which can be read about here: www. readwriteweb. com/ start/ 2010/ 07/ picking-the-right-programming-language-for-your-startup.php  
  
_Oi, tudo bem?_ = “Hi, how are you?”  
_e você?_ = “and you?”  
_tchau_ = “bye” (informal)


	6. Chapter 6

Thank you to everyone who has commented!  
\--  
  
They release the press statement.  
  
Eduardo buries himself in work for a bit. He has Ava schedule meetings with American app developers and fishes out a few potential clients and investments on his own. He watches the stock market, world business news and weather reports, IMF projections and environmental studies, the prices of oil and gold. He lets Ava RSVP yes to a few events he usually avoids, in L.A. and D.C., New York and Palo Alto.  
  
He succeeds in not thinking about Mark much.  
  
(He’s done this before, after all.)  
  
But Eduardo still wakes up in the middle of most nights, hard from a half-remembered dream, visions of pale skin and messy curls, sharp blue eyes and chapped lips, burning the backs of his eyelids. Sometimes from their Harvard days, sometimes from the depositions. He’s not sure which ones hurt more.  
  
He’s avoiding speaking to Chris, which is only easy because Chris is doing the same. He ignores Dustin’s faux-casual invitations to watch a movie or go out for a beer. He tells Suzana and Anthony he’s fine, no matter how many times they ask. He flirts with a pretty barista but doesn’t ask for her number, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s too busy, or because he knows what it would look like once the press got wind of it, or because of Mark.  
  
_I’m scheduling a press conference for next week,_ Chris texts him eventually.  
  
_I’ll be in New York for a conference then. Ava will fill you in.  
  
You’re leaving already?  
  
I’m not going back to Singapore yet, but I can’t put all of my work on hold.  
  
I need to know that you and Mark aren’t going to do that in front of anyone else,_ Chris texts, finally getting to his main point. _It was bad enough that I was there._  
  
_Sorry,_ Eduardo sends back, because he is, when it comes to Chris.  
  
Maybe he should be sorry about the rest of it too. Maybe he would be, if his words were as true as they were cruel, but it’s Mark who specializes in that. Eduardo isn’t supposed to be that angry anymore, he’s supposed to be over it, he’s supposed to be better than that. But he isn’t sorry. He can’t pretend to be, can’t take the high road, can’t call Mark and lie through his teeth to smooth things over.  
  
_Can’t, or won’t?_ questions a voice in his head that sounds like his therapist.  
  
(Eduardo has been avoiding calls from Dr. Wu as well. He’s been good, these past few years – avoiding overly intense relationships, breaking impulsive and potentially self-destructive habits, making himself think rationally instead of giving into a mood swing or his insecurities. He doesn’t want to disappoint her by backsliding.)  
  
_I know it’s too much to ask that you try to clear the air with Mark,_ Chris texts, because he is a very smart man, and then, _but we both know you two have to play civil now and that most of it will fall to you._  
  
Doesn’t it always? At no point in his relationship with Mark – best friends, business partners, legal opponents, distant colleagues, whatever the fuck they are now – has Eduardo not been the one doing all the heavy lifting, the one who is responsible and practical, the one who has to compromise and make allowances and exceptions. Mark sure as shit never would.  
  
There has always been a balance of power, and it has never been Eduardo’s. He’s fucking sick of it.  
  
_I’ll be fine at the press conference,_ he texts back to Chris, and then turns off his phone.

Normally, whenever Eduardo is back in New York, he loves every minute of it. He’s never been the sort of person to get attached to a specific place, but he’s always loved big cities, global cities. São Paulo and New York in his younger days, and then Singapore and Shanghai, Tokyo and Zurich, Mumbai and Moscow.  
  
(Miami and Los Angeles and San Francisco, not so much, for reasons he prefers not to think about.)  
  
There’s a sentimental value to New York, though. His memories of São Paulo have faded with time, and Singapore will always be just a little bit tainted by the circumstances surrounding his move there. There are bad memories from New York too (_Mark’s disdain of the advertisers they met with, hours and hours on the subway, Christy and screaming and fire_), but Eduardo still associates the city mostly with his early memories of it. Of being young and excited and trusting his own business instincts for the first time, making a killing by watching the weather.  
  
This time, though, New York fails to raise his spirits. Eduardo feels too much like he’s running away, like he’s trying to escape something but is only delaying the inevitable, like he’s stretched on a taut wire and could fall at any moment.  
  
He calls Suzana and keeps the conversation entirely on what’s going on with her. Despite that, she gentles her voice before they hang up, offering to take some time off and come see him. Eduardo refuses, insisting that he’s fine and that it would be ridiculous for her to cross continents when his business stateside is surely soon to conclude. Suzy agrees, but she sounds both skeptical and worried.  
  
\--  
  
Clearly, Facebook’s press release regarding recent rumours has not stopped the gossip. There were photographers at the airport, and more outside the conference hall, and Eduardo is pretty sure he’s never been stared at so much at a business function before, even during or immediately after the lawsuit.  
  
Then again, the details of that were never public knowledge, unlike the details of Mark’s sex life.  
  
At least no one is gauche enough to ask Eduardo about it (thank God Sean isn’t here; he’d bring it up just for kicks). He has no illusions that the other conference attendees aren’t talking about it amongst themselves, though, or that it isn’t all about Mark.  
  
(Isn’t it always?)  
  
Mark has a lot of admirers, people who praise him as a genius and a visionary, but he also has many detractors – out of envy, Mark would claim, if he bothered to speculate as to motives, but also out of genuine dislike of his public persona or his lack of business etiquette, of Facebook or of e-business in general. Eduardo would bet (well, not _bet_, but if it were a fluctuation in the Gulf Stream, he’d shift his investments around accordingly) that there are a lot of people in here positively gleeful over Mark’s troubles.  
  
Eduardo’s not sure how he feels about that. He doesn’t think he’s a vindictive person, but maybe he would be slightly (vengefully, guiltily) amused if it weren’t at his own expense.  
  
_No,_ he decides, nibbling on a canapé and pretending to listen to a blowhard CEO’s stance on the RIM vs. Apple war. _No, I’m not vengeful like that, like Mark._  
  
(Mark, who last week sneered at him about playing the martyr. Who, long before, stared at him across a table as he said _“my father won’t even look at me”_. Who, longer back still, screamed at him _“Do you realize that you jeopardized the entire company?!”_)  
  
Eduardo shakes his head, which is apparently the cue for a VP to give her two cents on CVCA.  
  
He isn’t vengeful. He _isn’t_. There’s a difference between wanting revenge and wanting justice.  
  
_And which of those did you want when you called Mark pathetic?_ questions a voice in his head that sounds like Chris. Stupid, sensible, obsessed-with-fairness Chris.  
  
_Which did you want when you froze the account?_ asks a voice that sounds like Mark.  
  
Fuck _this_. Eduardo is not going to get into an argument with Mark when he isn’t even here, like a crazy person.

Except as he nods in greeting to a contact and moves to mingle further, who does he spot on the other side of the room but Mark. Speak of the devil. Or think of him, apparently. Maybe Eduardo _is_ a crazy person.  
  
Or maybe Mark is, judging by the looks he’s being given by the people he’s mingling with (well, if ‘mingling with’ means ‘reluctantly standing somewhat close to whilst ignoring at least 90% of the conversation’). Seriously, why is Mark even here? He hates things that take him away from Facebook in general, and events that include social aspects in particular, and this is basically a networking function masquerading as a venture capitalism conference.  
  
Mark doesn’t network, and Eduardo doubts he does his own investing.  
  
(He called it a _“pretentious and less fun form of gambling”_ when Eduardo told him about going to New York the summer before Facebook, and even when he called him to ramble excitedly about making $300,000, Mark had only said, _“I suppose it is ‘great’. If you care about money.”_)  
  
So what the hell is Mark doing here?  
  
And why is he wearing a suit that actually looks tailored this time?  
  
Eduardo looks away – he is _not_ having another suit-related mini-crisis – and picks a champagne flute off a tray before determinedly throwing himself into networking in a way he hasn’t since he was a teenager and his father was watching. And, just as he did back then, Eduardo starts to drink a bit more than is perhaps wise. He can handle liquor a lot better than he can handle Mark right now (or last week, or years ago, or _ever_ –).  
  
He drinks too much. He knows he’s doing it, falling back into bad habits – three drinks just to feel like his stomach isn’t inside-out with nervousness; another two to ignore Mark’s gaze burning between his shoulder blades; another to forget that back at Harvard, he’d be at the point of picking up a hot girl right about now, or maybe a hot guy; another two to pretend he isn’t watching Mark’s mouth on the rim of his champagne flute, his long fingers around the stem.  
  
Eventually, the pleasant thrum in his veins is strong enough that he can almost forget Mark is there at all.  
  
Until he steps out onto the terrace for some fresh air, and Mark pounces.  
  
“I think you’ve had enough,” he says, which is an odd opening, and he’s frowning, which is odd too, considering that it looks more worried than irritated.  
  
“Thank you for your concern,” Eduardo says dryly, and knocks back the rest of his drink.  
  
“You may have the rest of the room fooled, but do you honestly think I can’t tell when you’ve been drinking excessively?”  
  
Honestly, Eduardo doubts Mark ever knew him well enough – or cared enough to learn – to be able to tell.  
  
“I’m not _drunk_, I’m just…happy. Or I _was_.”  
  
“What astoundingly witty wordplay, Wardo,” Mark says dryly.  
  
“Look, if you’re done reaching your annual quota of acting like a human being, I’ll be heading back in -”  
  
Mark blocks the doorway.  
  
“Now that’s mature.”  
  
He shrugs. “Ends, means, et cetera.”  
  
“Move.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Well, this has certainly degenerated quickly.  
  
“_Mark_.”  
  
“At least you’re not saying please and dripping politeness.”  
  
“Yes, you’ve stripped me of my manners, congratulations, now move.”  
  
Mark shifts his weight, but doesn’t step or look away. “I just want to talk.”  
  
Eduardo takes a moment to stare incredulously, and before he can reply, someone else is saying awkwardly, “Excuse us, please, gentlemen.”  
  
Because there are other people on the terrace.  
  
Before Eduardo can let the full humiliating weight of that sink in, Mark is grabbing his arm and tugging him away.  
  
Eduardo lets him.  
  
He’d blame it on the alcohol, but he wasn’t lying when he said he’s not drunk. It takes a lot of booze to get him past buzzed.  
  
It’s just odd for Mark to be initiating physical contact beyond necessity or his rare concessions to friendliness in the form of a slap on the arm. It was always Eduardo who tugged at Mark, away from a frat boy he’d just insulted or into the fresh air he avoided; it was always Eduardo who nudged him with a leg at a joke, or put a hand on his back while they walked, or slung an arm around him when they stumbled drunkenly away from a party.

Eduardo can’t remember the last time they touched.  
  
And he _definitely_ doesn’t remember being hyperaware of it, of the heat of Mark’s skin through his clothes, heat that passes through him in a wave, unfurls low in his stomach, molten.  
  
(Except maybe once, that one time when –)  
  
The frisson of memory, of pain, jolts Eduardo out of it and he nearly yanks his arm out of Mark’s grip. But they’re already making enough of a scene.  
  
“You’re certainly helping to kill the rumours here, Mark,” he says once he’s been dragged into the alley behind the hall.  
  
“You didn’t seem amenable to having this conversation where someone might overhear.”  
  
“I’m not amenable to having it, period.”  
  
Mark narrows his eyes, and what could he possibly have left to say, and how much more is Eduardo going to have to drink to try to forget how much it will hurt, and why is he still holding onto his arm? Eduardo lets his gaze drift down pointedly and Mark lets go of him instantly, taking a large step backward, hand twitching and then falling awkwardly to his side. It takes him a moment to remember his suit jacket has pockets.  
  
It’s eerily reminiscent of Caribbean night for a moment, and Eduardo wonders if it’s strange that he only remembers random bits and pieces of that night, that turning point in his life, the beginning of the end of him and Mark. How excited Mark sounded, how he breathed white in the cold, how ridiculous Eduardo’s hat was. He doesn’t remember the words Mark used to tell him about thefacebook, but he remembers verbatim Mark’s opinion on his getting punched by the Phoenix.  
  
Which is a little strange, considering that Eduardo ignored the comment, like he ignored all the comments like it, always shrugging off Mark’s occasional digs and perpetual lateness and casual selfishness. Eternally oblivious to all the little things – the human equivalents of the shape of clouds and the rate of change of atmospheric pressure – that should have tipped him off, but didn’t.  
  
Eduardo is about to remind Mark that he’s the one who wanted to talk, but Mark finally pipes up.  
  
“It’s been brought to my attention that something I said could easily be misinterpreted.”  
  
“In other words, Chris told you to apologize.” Eduardo could have told him that was a pipe dream.  
  
“Possibly; I stopped listening when it stopped being pertinent. But, Wardo, about your father – when I said you were a disappointment. I meant that you’re a disappointment _to him_, because of whatever his deal is that makes him an enormous asshole -”  
  
“_Mark_ -”  
  
“- not because of _you_.”  
  
Eduardo doesn’t reply; he knows his disbelief is obvious enough.  
  
“You told me once that it wouldn’t matter what you did, if you became the richest person in the world _and_ the first foreign-born President of the United States, your father still wouldn’t be proud. I’ve never understood how you can act like you know that, but not like you believe it.”  
  
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Eduardo breathes, because _really?_ He hadn’t even been sure Mark was listening at the time.  
  
Mark’s mouth quirks, sardonic but with something almost sad about it. Like Eduardo’s missed something obvious and Mark is disappointed but unsurprised.  
  
Eduardo exhales harshly. “So you didn’t mean that. Fine. You meant everything else you said.”  
  
“So did you.”  
  
“No…I meant a lot of it, but some of it was…not – not true. And I didn’t mean those things. I was – I was angry.”  
  
He’s still angry. Furious, even, but with the alcohol in his veins right now and his refusal to acknowledge it, Eduardo barely feels it at present.  
  
“Which things?” Mark demands.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Which things didn’t you mean?”  
  
Eduardo is starting to feel uncomfortable with how intently Mark is watching him, and how long he’s been watching him. He may have missed a lot of things when he was friends with Mark, but he’s pretty sure this wasn’t one of them. He remembers constantly chasing after Mark’s attention all too vividly, and sometimes feeling like the harder he tried, the more Mark ignored him.  
  
He’s not ignoring him now.

It makes Eduardo look away. He feels hot, almost feverish, but that’s the booze, surely. He absent-mindedly tugs at the knot of his tie with one hand, undoes it, trying to figure out how to answer Mark’s question. He looks back, but Mark’s gaze has shifted down. He’s watching Eduardo’s fingers, the strip of bare skin exposed at his throat.  
  
Eduardo’s hand freezes.  
  
Mark looks up and there’s no denying this time that he _is_ blushing.  
  
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Eduardo asks, and winces at how plaintive, pleading he sounds.  
  
Mark tilts his head to the side, curious. “Would it have made a difference?”  
  
Eduardo can’t answer that.  
  
He wants to say _no_, because it should be true. Because that’s the answer with finality, the one that could be a first step in moving past this and returning to the distant civility they’d had before. Because Eduardo knows _what ifs_ are pointless and self-indulgent and painful.  
  
He wants to say _yes_, not because it might be true. Not because Eduardo remembers how he craved Mark’s attention and any scrap of affection he could get, and how he always made exceptions for Mark, and how he might have made another one if he’d known what Mark wanted from him. Not because he's starting to realize that he’s not nearly as immune to attraction to Mark as he would have thought.  
  
Eduardo kind of wants to say _yes_ because he wants to hurt Mark, wants him to feel regret about _something_ in their past, wants him to be the one wishing things had gone differently. He wants to turn the tables, just once.  
  
But alcohol has always made Eduardo a bit too honest. “I don’t know,” he says. “But you should have told me, regardless.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because we were best friends!” Or Eduardo thought they were. It shouldn’t be surprising, to learn that there’s yet another thing he missed, misinterpreted, projected, _deluded himself_ about. It shouldn’t still sting.  
  
More quietly, he says, “That’s what you do, when you’re best friends. You tell each other everything.”  
  
Mark is unimpressed, as always. “What, did you learn that from an after-school special?”  
  
Eduardo leans back, the curve of his skull against the wall, eyes closed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”  
  
“You never answered my question. Which parts didn’t you mean?”  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
“Yes,” Mark says, frustration bleeding into his speech, slowing it down slightly. “It matters, Eduardo, _you_ – Just answer me.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“How can you not know?”  
  
“I just don’t,” Eduardo says simply, though nothing about this is simple at all, it’s a Gordian knot of ambivalent emotions and semi-suppressed thoughts. Mark would like that metaphor, he thinks. Eduardo squeezes his eyes shut tighter.  
  
“That makes no sense. I know you rarely say what you mean, or you mean it, but not in the way most people would -”  
  
Eduardo’s eyes pop open. “What?”  
  
“- but I thought _you_ at least knew that you really meant. Why can’t you just tell me, Eduardo?”  
  
He shuts his eyes again. “I already told you, I don’t know. Besides,” he talks over Mark’s snort, “I don’t owe you an explanation.”  
  
“I’d say you do.”  
  
“_Shocking_, considering your narcissistic sense of entitlement.”  
  
“You tell me you didn’t mean some of what you said; how is it unwarranted to want to know the specifics? Or for you to look at me when we’re speaking, for that matter.”  
  
“That’s rich, coming from you.”  
  
“I think,” Mark says, “that we’ve established you have no idea how much I look at you. Among other things.”  
  
Okay, that’s the sort of comment that makes Eduardo never want to look Mark in the eye again. Which is why he immediately does, glaring, because he should _not_ be the embarrassed one here. “How do you get off saying shit like that to me?” he demands, and then instantly regrets it, flushing.  
  
_“Get off”? Nice word choice, Saverin, really._  
  
Mark, the asshole, looks amused. “I was only implying before and you weren’t getting it.” He frowns. “You always understood when I implied things before.”  
  
“If there’s anything we’ve _established_, Mark, it’s that I thought I understood you and I really, really _didn’t_.”  
  
And there goes all his effort at not letting his anger build up again.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N:_ I’m sorry for the delay with this part (RL interferences, etc.)! Also, please refer back to my warnings in 1a.  
\--  
  
Eduardo pushes himself off the wall, straightening to his full height. “So. You liked to look at me. I fell asleep in your dorm sometimes; did you look at me then?”  
  
Mark’s expression remains mostly blank, but Eduardo would have once read alarm into the way his eyes widen. “What are you -”  
  
“Or when I was talking to you, telling you things because you were my best friend and, silly me, I thought that meant I could tell you anything.” _Trust you with anything._ “How many times did you look at me when I talked and think about how my mouth could be put to better use?”  
  
Mark turns bright red, and Eduardo has his answer.  
  
He snorts. “At least I know now why you never seemed to be listening to a word I said.”  
  
“That’s not – Wardo, I _was_ -”  
  
Eduardo always thought that ‘seeing red’ thing was just an expression, but when Mark uses that nickname…  
  
“Is that what you said, in bed with that guy? Tell me so that it’s ruined _completely_ this time around.”  
  
“I told you, that wasn’t intentional! Saying your name or the guy going public with it. None of this is _intentional_, so stop acting like I’m on some campaign to hurt you -”  
  
Mark is speaking quick, frantic, taken aback, and it reminds Eduardo so strongly of when he confronted Mark about the dilution that his fingers itch to break something again. Like Mark’s face.  
  
“The other thing I’m curious about,” Eduardo says, “is why you didn’t say anything after I signed the papers. I mean, you only wanted me around for money and sex -” and for a split second, he can’t speak, can’t _breathe_, and how is it possible that he’s hurting like this _again_ – “so once you had Thiel’s money and my signature, why didn’t you try to get me into bed? It was your opportune moment, and there would have been something poetic about it, almost – screwing me two ways at once.”  
  
Mark shuts his eyes. “I didn’t – I would never – what do you think I am, Eduardo, a sociopath?”  
  
“A narcissist, maybe. And don’t tell me you’d never have done it, like you’re incapable of cruelty. If I’d have offered…”  
  
“But you wouldn’t have! That’s like a – a _Dustin_ hypothetical, a ‘what if the world was going to end if you didn’t choose between Kirk and Picard’ or ‘which video game would you pick for a battle to the death with aliens’ -”  
  
Eduardo wishes that were true, that the possibility of him sleeping with Mark was that improbable, that absurd.  
  
The fact that it isn’t makes him somehow, impossibly, angrier. It’s like falling now – he can’t stop until he hits rock-bottom.  
  
“- you never, _ever_ thought of me that way, you’d never even _consider_ -”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Mark is so flabbergasted by the question that he doesn’t say anything.  
  
“It’s not impossible, Mark. I’d fooled around with guys before -”  
  
“I know,” Mark says sharply, and then looks like he wishes he hadn’t.  
  
“Jealous, were you?” Eduardo asks innocently, and Mark winces before he glares. “It’s not out of the question that I’d have considered sleeping with you. Especially then. I was – I was…_happy_, thinking everything was good with us again and that we’d made it, Facebook made it…and we had a few beers too, before I flew back…”  
  
_Don’t remember that and don’t talk about it, _fuck_, just forget it already, you pathetic, sentimental _idiot_, forgetitforgetitforgetit…_  
  
“So between being stupidly happy and a bit buzzed, I might’ve considered it. I kissed Chris when I was drunk once, so.”  
  
“You _what_?”  
  
“It wasn’t too long after that night, actually. But after the dilution, back at Harvard. I was -” _depressed and furious and humiliated_ “- at a Phoenix Club party and I got -” _so drunk I could barely stand up, and Chris had to save me from going home with some guy, even though I’d fucked a girl and blown a guy that night already_ “- a bit drunk and I kissed him. He pushed me away immediately, of course, but Chris is not you. He was never into me and he’s, you know, a decent human being.  
  
“But _you_ – if I’d kissed you in Palo Alto, after you stabbed me in the back but before I knew that, would you have stopped me?”

Mark bites his bottom lip and stares at the ground. His cheekbones are still pink and his shoulders have sagged. He looks…defeated. It’s an alien look on him.  
  
There was a time when Eduardo would have hated to see it, would have thought all these stupid, sentimental things – that it looked wrong, unnatural, heartbreaking, to see Mark like that.  
  
Now, it feels as good as it does awful. It feels like winning, even though it hurts, because if a Pyrrhic victory is all Eduardo can ever get from Mark, he’ll take it. He’ll take whatever he can get.  
  
Hasn’t he always?  
  
“You wouldn’t have stopped me, would you?” Eduardo can hear how raw his voice sounds, and he knows that his eyes must be visibly wet now, but he can’t make himself shut up. “You’d have let me go on thinking that everything was great, just so you could fuck me.”  
  
“I.” Mark swallows and looks at him. “I never thought I had a chance at having you – at having that. So if you’d given me one…I don’t think I would have been able to say no.”  
  
“That,” Eduardo says, “is such bullshit, Mark. It’s a bullshit excuse. As if you’d have spared a second’s concern for how it would have hurt me. If anything, that would have given it even more appeal to you, even more of a power trip.”  
  
“Wardo, _no_ -”  
  
“So don’t pretend that you would have been conflicted or something, like you would have been so desperate for me that you’d be incapable of stopping -”  
  
Mark goes perfectly still and flushes full-on red again, which gives Eduardo pause.  
  
It also gives him a very dangerous idea.  
  
“If that was true then, is it true now?”  
  
“Is it – what?”  
  
“Are you still that desperate for it now?” Eduardo takes a step closer and Mark fucking _jumps_. “I think you are.”  
  
“Do you get a personality transplant when you’re angry?” Mark demands, but it’s not as biting as it should be, and when Eduardo steps even closer, Mark inhales, sharp.  
  
“You said that if I’d given you a chance, you might not have been able to say no. Is that still true?”  
  
“You – but you don’t – you’ve never – I don’t – I think you’re just drunk, I -”  
  
Mark reduced to rambling; Eduardo never thought he’d see the day. It sends a thrill up his spine, a heady combination of power and vindictiveness, of finally being the one on top.  
  
“I think it must still be true, considering it’s been years and you’re still gagging for it,” he says, walking in a lazy circle around Mark, casually invading his personal space, watching him for any sign of weakness.  
  
Mark stands stock still, shoulders hunched, and watches Eduardo like he can’t look away, with something in his eyes Eduardo can’t identify.  
  
“If I asked you to get on your knees for me right now, would you?”  
  
Mark’s eyes immediately drop below Eduardo’s belt – and, seriously, when did he get hard? – and then he _licks his lips_.  
  
“I think you would.”  
  
The thing is, Eduardo is full of shit. He’s angry and he’s distraught and he’s lashing out, and he absolutely does not expect Mark to go along with it. He expects Mark to pull out of this odd daze he goes into when Eduardo surprises him with the intensity of his rage, any second now, and turn the tables again, take Eduardo down with a few pointed words, win like he always does.  
  
He gapes when Mark drops to his knees.  
  
Mark’s hand is an inch away from his belt buckle when Eduardo makes a noise of alarm. He pauses and looks up at Eduardo, pupils blown wide. “You didn’t mean it?”  
  
_No,_ Eduardo wants to say, except Mark’s voice cracked when he spoke and his hand is still in the air, shaking.  
  
(Mark’s hands don’t shake, Eduardo’s brain tells him, ever. No matter how little sleep and how much caffeine he’s had, his hands are steady over a keyboard, or on a conference room table in a law firm.)  
  
“I meant it.”

Mark doesn’t hesitate. He’s got Eduardo’s belt undone and pants and boxer briefs tugged down in a second, and then he’s sucking at the head and Jesus _fuck_ it feels good.  
  
Eduardo is a gentleman. He is the kind of boyfriend who always buys thoughtful gifts for birthdays and anniversaries, who plans romantic dates, who sends flowers and holds open doors. He is never rough in bed unless it’s asked for, and never with oral, period. He is always careful not to tug too much on hair or to thrust his hips too hard and is always full of praise for his partner.  
  
Eduardo is not a gentleman with Mark.  
  
“Stop fucking teasing,” he snaps, because Mark’s just been licking at him, long, savouring swipes of his tongue from head to base on the underside, then all around, pausing to lick his lips and then suck at the head again, before starting the whole process over.  
  
Eduardo puts his hand in Mark’s hair, and it’s the flash of sensory memory (_stroking his temples when Mark had a migraine, watching his eyelashes flutter at the slight relief_) more than anything else that makes him yank on Mark’s curls.  
  
Mark just makes this low keening sound and goes with it, sucking Eduardo into his mouth eagerly. His mouth looks obscene, red and stretched wide, and his cheeks are hollowing and his eyes are dark and hungry on Eduardo’s.  
  
And Eduardo looks away, stares up at the night sky, tries not to think about how Mark might taste, how Mark might expect reciprocation after, how he’s trembling at the thought with something that might be apprehension but might not be, might be something else, might be –  
  
Then his cock hits the back of Mark’s throat and Eduardo groans and bucks his hips forward involuntarily.  
  
Mark pulls off him, and Eduardo looks back down in time to see Mark lick his lips and gasp shakily before swallowing him down again. His hands are shaking in Mark’s hair and he shuts his eyes, trying to lose himself in the sensations of _hot_ and _wet_ and _oh-God-so-fucking-good_…  
  
But even with Mark’s mouth occupied, Eduardo can still hear his voice in his head. He hears _“you always get it wrong”_ and _“you’re still under the delusion that you’ll ever be anything but a disappointment”_ and _“interpreting everything to go along with your martyr’s vision of the world”_ –  
  
(and _“it probably _was_ a diversity thing”_ and _“left behind”_ and _“you’re gonna blame me because you’re the business head of the company, and you made a bad business decision with your own company?”_)  
  
Eduardo bucks his hips again, and Mark gags a bit but doesn’t pull back. He shuffles closer, hands on Eduardo’s thighs, eyes closed in concentration now, and Eduardo shuts his eyes again as Mark swallows around him, again and again and again. He can’t help but pant and moan at the constant, wet pressure of Mark’s mouth, the clenching of Mark’s throat, but he can stop himself from senseless babbling of the litany in his head of _Mark_ and _fuck_ and _Mark_ and _so close_ and _MarkMarkMarkohGod_Mark –  
  
He comes without warning, and even through the euphoric haze, he feels Mark swallowing, hears him make a desperate, hungry sound around him.  
  
“Wardo, _fuck_,” Mark gasps suddenly, fingers digging into the backs of Eduardo’s legs as he presses his forehead against his thigh.  
  
_Mark just came,_ Eduardo notes, and it’s a surreal thought. Mark just came without Eduardo touching him, without even touching himself. Eduardo doesn’t know how to process it, any of it – that Mark would do that at all, that he would be so _eager_ for it, that he could come entirely from sucking Eduardo off. It’s – it’s bizarre and irrational and unhealthy and…  
  
Unsettling. Intoxicating.  
  
_Oh shit, what has he done?_  
  
Eduardo takes his hand out of Mark’s hair. It hangs at his side, limp and trembling.  
  
As if things between him and Mark weren’t already fucked up enough.

Mark takes a few more gasps of air before pulling back, and standing up. He’s running his tongue around inside and outside of his mouth, and there’s a wet stain on his pants, and Eduardo thinks he could maybe have a stroke just from looking at him. He glances away and remembers to zip himself up. Christ.  
  
Mark’s voice is hoarse. “Do you believe me now?”  
  
Eduardo looks at him, and starts to laugh, full of palpable hurt and hysteria. Because of course that’s what this was about to Mark; _everything_ is about proving himself right, and Eduardo wrong, and _winning_, when it comes to Mark. It’s insane and it’s typical and Eduardo just voluntarily walked back into the asylum.  
  
So much for being over his self-destructive impulses.  
  
“I’m leaving,” he says. “I wouldn’t recommend you try to stop me this time.”  
  
Mark looks at him, but doesn’t say a word when Eduardo turns around, doesn’t do a thing to stop him from walking away.  
  
(It’s not the first time. It is the second.)  
  
\--  
  
Eduardo calls Ava, who has a car ready for him so quickly that he once again questions whether the rules of the space-time continuum apply to her.  
  
He tells her he’s not going to his hotel, but doesn’t ask her to cancel the booking or to make a new one. It’s possible that Sean’s paranoia has rubbed off on him, which would normally be a frightening thought, but Eduardo will not accept even the slightest chance of ending up at the same hotel as Mark. He already feels the way he did as a teenager visiting Brazil, when he and his cousins would sneak out at night and go to certain parts of São Paulo, like he isn’t safe.  
  
He has never been safe with Mark, but he’s never been so acutely aware of it before now.  
  
“Thanks for letting me crash here, Tony,” Eduardo says when he arrives at Anthony’s penthouse apartment in the Upper East Side. “It’ll just be for tonight.”  
  
“No problem. Frankly, it’s nice to have some company. This place feels too big for me, without Lindsey here.”  
  
Normally, the last thing Eduardo would want to hear about when he’s this tired and upset is Anthony’s melodrama with his on-and-off girlfriend. They’ve been breaking up and making up for as long as he’s known them.  
  
On the other hand, Eduardo would rather think about Anthony and Lindsey (or about Ebola, or enemas, or _anything_) than about Mark.  
  
“What happened this time?”  
  
Anthony starts to tell him, and Eduardo tries to listen, tries to be a good friend, tries not to think about Mark, tries not to feel sick with anger and guilt and _more_ anger over that guilt, and pain and panic and self-loathing, tries not to hear Mark’s voice in his head again.  
  
(Because he can also hear _“I need you”_ and _“I want – I want – I need you here”_ and _“you never, _ever_ thought of me like that”_…)  
  
“…how I’m the bad guy just because I want to go to my firm’s Christmas party and maybe see my parents instead of to her sister’s annual thing in Switzerland, which we did last year…” Anthony trails off. “Uh, are you okay, Eduardo? You look a little green.”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
Anthony raises his eyebrows at him. “You say that a lot.”  
  
“I just, um, drank too much, I think.” Yes, that could explain that tight, knotted feeling beneath his sternum, like he can’t take quite enough air in, like his stomach is trying to claw its way up his esophagus.  
  
“I’ve seen you drink an entire frat under the table.”  
  
“Well, I…I had a lot of rich food too.”  
  
“Eduardo -”  
  
“Look, _I’m fine_, let’s talk about you, okay?”  
  
Anthony eyes him for a few seconds and then says, “I’m kind of tired, actually, and I have an early day tomorrow. Court date for a major client is in less than a month. I’ll go make up the guest room for you.”  
  
As soon as Anthony disappears down the hallway, Eduardo finds himself lurching at the sink, and vomiting until his ears ring.  
  
They ring with Mark saying _“I never thought I had a chance at having you”_, and the way his voice cracked when he asked if Eduardo meant it, and the sounds he made while he sucked Eduardo off like he couldn’t get enough of him, like he’d swallow him whole if he could.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N:_ I’m so sorry about the delay in posting this part! Work has been insanely busy lately, and during what little writing time I've had, I've gone back and forth on what to include and cut out of this part, which has ended up being weirdly long anyway. But my project at work will be done by the end of the week, so it’s back to a few days between chapters, lj permitting.  
\--  
  
Eduardo has never been so relieved to leave New York in his life.  
  
He’s never particularly cared for D.C., but as long as nothing is around to remind him of Mark and no one is around to ask him if he’s _fine_, he can manage not to think about him, to focus entirely on work.  
  
Eduardo really should know by now not to tempt fate by thinking things like that.  
  
He’s in his hotel suite reviewing a biotech company’s prospectus when his phone rings.  
  
“You wanna tell me what the hell happened in New York?”  
  
Eduardo double-checks the screen of his phone; it still claims that, yes, it is indeed Dustin speaking to him in this low, humourless, angry voice. “Um, hi?”  
  
“Hi. What happened, Eduardo?”  
  
“Nothing.” If he repeats that enough, maybe he’ll start to believe it.  
  
“‘Nothing’ doesn’t make Mark act like someone stole a few of our best programmers, and told him his mom has cancer, and ran over his dog.”  
  
That…that’s just…Eduardo doesn’t even know what to do with that. It makes it a little difficult for him to breathe over the sharp stab of guilt in his chest, but he also can’t quite believe it. Mark doesn’t get upset over things that aren’t Facebook or his ego.  
  
Okay, Eduardo acknowledges, that’s unfair. Mark is not completely devoid of emotions. But he can’t be upset just because of what happened in New York, just because of _Eduardo_, he _can’t_ be. That would imply that – well, it might suggest that – that Mark…  
  
Eduardo stops that thought dead in its tracks. It’s preposterous and, more than that, it’s _dangerous_.  
  
And yet Eduardo still has trouble taking a breath, he still can barely get out, “Mark doesn’t have a dog.”  
  
“Oh, that is _so_ not the point!” Dustin yells, and Eduardo flinches, because _Dustin_ is _yelling_, what even – “Mark is being downright nasty with the interns, overbearing with even our best programmers, giving _Chris_ of all people the silent treatment for some reason… I haven’t seen him like this since -”  
  
“What, the dilution?” Eduardo snaps.  
  
“Since the lawsuit.”  
  
“That wasn’t exactly a picnic for me either, you know.”  
  
“I know.” Dustin sounds slightly less angry now, and much more tired. “It’s just…that no-contact clause hit him pretty hard, and I really hate seeing him like this again.”  
  
“The no-contact…what?”  
  
“The one your lawyers put in the first proposed settlement agreement.” Dustin pauses, like he’s considering how much more to say, how much to hold back. “Anyway. Something had to have happened in New York for Mark to be acting like that again.”  
  
“I…I did something stupid and messed up,” Eduardo admits. “We both did.”  
  
“Well, _duh_. That’s like saying ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘water is wet’ or ‘Sean is coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs’. I’m going to need more to go on than that, Wardo.”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” Eduardo says reflexively.  
  
“…oh _shit_. That bad?”  
  
“Worse.”  
  
“_Fuck_. I thought you two were more or less over all that. Well, that you were, anyway.”  
  
“So did I. I mostly was, really, but then Mark had to go and -”  
  
“He didn’t mean to,” Dustin says defensively. “You know, Eduardo, Mark is suffering too. He has been from the -”  
  
“_Don’t_ try to make me feel sorry for him, Dustin. I get that you’re on his side. I think I got that pretty clearly back when he told you about the dilution scheme and you went along with it.”  
  
“That’s not exactly -”  
  
“But you knew. You knew and you didn’t say a word to me.” It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, but Eduardo doesn’t exactly enjoy dwelling on it.  
  
“No, I didn’t.” Dustin sighs. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know everything. Mark warned me not to sign the same papers, so I had an idea, but I didn’t know the details. And I don’t blame you for being upset and for what you – for what happened, after. But Eduardo, you weren’t the only one hurt in the whole mess.”

“So you still equate freezing the account with stabbing your best friend in the back? _Jesus_, Dustin -”  
  
“That’s not what I said and I really don’t want to argue about it. That wasn’t my point.”  
  
“Then what, pray tell, is your point?”  
  
“That it really fucking hurts to lose the person you’re in love with, even if you shoved him away yourself.”  
  
“Mark did not ‘lose’ me, he threw me away like trash, and – wait, _what_?”  
  
Eduardo must be hallucinating now, because there is no way that Dustin just said –  
  
“Mark was in love with you then and he’s in love with you now.”  
  
“…you are out of your mind,” Eduardo declares. “I know I’ve said that before, and I was only partly serious, but this time -”  
  
“Eduardo, you cannot be this oblivious now. It was kind of funny in college, until it wasn’t. But you’re almost thirty now and Mark said your name in bed with someone else and chased you to New York because he upset you. Open your eyes.”  
  
“I’m not _that_ close to thirty.”  
  
“You’ve really got to work on focusing on the important parts of what people say.”  
  
“What you said doesn’t make sense. At all. I’ve heard Sean make more sense when he’s high! Mark doesn’t care about me and he never did.”  
  
Dustin is silent for so long that Eduardo thinks the signal may have been lost. When he does speak, there’s something worse than anger in his voice – pity. “You really believe that, don’t you?”  
  
“Of course. It took me a lot longer to figure out than it should have, but.” Eduardo wants to finish with a platitude like _c’est la vie_, but he’d never pull off the lightheartedness.  
  
No matter what Dustin says, Mark can’t love him, not now and not before, not in a romantic sense or in the way Eduardo had loved him. Mark stabbed him in the back, and never apologized or explained or even showed the slightest sign that he gave a damn about ruining their friendship. The fact that he’s…interested…in Eduardo complicates things, but it doesn’t change the basic facts. Mark all but said that himself, when he admitted he would have slept with Eduardo even while having his shares diluted. No amount of attraction can justify that level of selfishness.  
  
Mark _wants_ him, sure; but want is not love.  
  
“I – I’m going to let you go.” Dustin doesn’t mention possibly getting together when Eduardo is back in Palo Alto, and Eduardo might be relieved or disappointed, hurt or numb, he can’t even tell anymore.  
  
“Bye.”  
  
Eduardo hangs up and closes his hand in a fist around the phone. It doesn’t stop it from shaking.  
  
\--  
  
“Can’t talk,” Chris says into his phone curtly. “Working.”  
  
“You’re still _at work_?” Dustin exclaims. “Chris, it’s two in the morning! And you were in at _seven_!”  
  
“Six,” Chris corrects automatically and then blinks in surprise at the clock on his desk.  
  
“Go home, man. This isn’t good for your health, the office already has one zombie workaholic to contend with, and you are literally the glue that holds everything together.”  
  
Chris is too tired to refrain from chuckling sadly. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a very good job at that.”  
  
“Chris,” Dustin says, voice joking but gentle, “it’s not actually your job to be everyone’s living emotional crutch, you know. And yet you’re still the only thing standing between Facebook’s top people and the abyss. Not to mention between me and total lunacy.”  
  
Chris laughs again, more genuinely this time. “Then I _definitely_ haven’t been doing a good job.”  
  
“I was _going_ to invite you over to check out my new car – a _Bugatti Veyron Super Sport_ – but since you’re so mean to me…”  
  
“I have no idea what that is. And what are you doing buying cars at this hour?”  
  
“Says the man who’s pulling a Zuckerberg.”  
  
Chris can’t say anything to that; when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. He shuts down his computer because, unlike some people he knows, he tries to keep unhealthy behaviour to a minimum. He listens to Dustin recite automobile stats he’s pretty sure neither of them understand and about the need to go to Germany to try it out on the autobahn.  
  
“Absolutely not,” says Chris as he packs his things into his briefcase. “You are not getting yourself killed and leaving me alone to deal with Eduardo and Mark.”

“Hey, look on the bright side – at least Sean hasn’t done anything too scandalous lately.”  
  
“Don’t jinx it.”  
  
“Superstitious much? Although, okay, psychics are probably real, and definitely ghosts…”  
  
Chris lets Dustin babble as he heads out. The only other person here is, predictably, Mark. Chris is relatively certain he hasn’t left the building in days. He’s also done nothing but code, abuse his employees, and glare at Chris like he’s defected to Twitter. It’s creepy, considering that Chris has no idea what he supposedly did to end up on Mark’s shit list, not to mention inconvenient, considering that they have a press conference in three days and it may have been that long since Mark showered.  
  
He briefly considers going inside Mark’s office and attempting to persuade him to leave. But that sort of thing was always Eduardo’s exclusive superpower, and even he only succeeded about half the time; the other half, he was talked into supplying Mark with the caffeine and snacks necessary to continue a coding binge.  
  
Also, Chris is tired of playing babysitter to his friends and Mark has been treating him like garbage recently for absolutely no reason. He turns and leaves.  
  
Naturally, because Dustin jinxed him, when Chris gets into his car, he checks his phone. Twelve minutes ago, Gawker published a story about Eduardo ‘cheating’ on Mark with a lawyer in Manhattan.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
\--  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Eduardo says in lieu of a ‘hello’ when Chris calls him the next morning. “I’m _so sorry_, Chris. I didn’t think – I should’ve –”  
  
“You saw Gawker, I take it,” Chris interjects, because Eduardo’s emotional tailspin isn’t so much predictable from miles away as it is a few feet ahead and damn obvious.  
  
“I did and it’s not true.”  
  
There’s no one here to see him, so Chris allows himself an eye-roll. “I didn’t think it was. But the media will seize on anything even remotely resembling a morsel of gossip so that they can keep milking this story for all it’s worth. I warned you they’d be watching.”  
  
“I know. It was careless of me. I’m sorry, Chris. You’ve already been doing so much for me and for – you’ve been such a help with this mess, and here I go and make everything worse because I just wasn’t _thinking_ and… I’m sorry.”  
  
He sounds so guilt-ridden that it makes Chris frown. Eduardo does have a tendency to overreact at times, but this feels a bit different. “Wardo, you’re allowed to visit your friends, you know.”  
  
“I should’ve thought about potential consequences first. I should’ve been more rational and less emotional. I should’ve -”  
  
“Is Anthony that upset?” Chris remembers the guy being laid-back – almost annoyingly so – back at Harvard, but that was years ago and they’d only really known each other through Eduardo, and Chris can’t think of any other reason for his friend to be self-castigating to this extent.  
  
“What? No. No, he thinks it’s _funny_. A senior partner at his firm commiserated, told him about how much worse it was back in his day, and gave him fantastic tickets to _Les Mis_. Oh, and apparently some girls find the prospect of guy-on-guy as hot as most guys find girl-on-girl, so he’s fine with people thinking he’s bi.”  
  
“Is he actually -”  
  
“No, but arguing with a lawyer is futile and frustrating in general, and trying to argue with one about _morality_ is…”  
  
“The punch line to some cliché joke, I’m sure.”  
  
“He asked me if I was sure I’m not bi, though.”  
  
Honestly, Chris has wondered himself multiple times, but he would never dream of suggesting that he understood someone else’s orientation better than they did. “What did you say?”  
  
“I said I was hanging up. Then I hung up.”  
  
“Okay,” Chris says slowly, not sure what’s going on here but beginning to have a vague, horrifying idea. “Is this about Mark?”  
  
“No!” Eduardo says instantly, indignantly, and an octave higher than normal.  
  
Chris prays for patience. “Wardo, I know this is weird for you, but it doesn’t have to be a crisis. It throws some things in your history with Mark into a different light, yes, but does it really change anything?”

There’s a long pause. Then Eduardo asks, “You weren’t surprised, were you?”  
  
“Not really. I didn’t suspect at Harvard but in retrospect, it sort of makes sense.”  
  
“_How_?”  
  
Chris isn’t sure if he can or should explain. He remembers how Mark stiffened and shifted away when anyone touched him except Eduardo, how he lit up when Eduardo returned from summer and Christmas holidays, how he ignored every one of Eduardo’s girlfriends and hook-ups a little more deliberately than he did most people. He remembers Mark scoffing that Eduardo’s study groups were only taking advantage of him, that the chess club was a level of geekdom even Dustin didn’t touch, that investing required more luck than skill or intellect. He remembers how Mark’s attitude towards finals clubs did a 180 when Eduardo got into one, and how Mark treated Christy like a vaguely irritating quantity of air, and how he glowered at his phone whenever he wasn’t coding during that first summer in Palo Alto.  
  
He remembers how Mark has never been quite the same since that lawsuit.  
  
Chris doesn’t feel comfortable telling all of this to Eduardo. He and Mark may not be as close friends as they used to be, but they _are_ still friends, and Chris will not reveal his maybe-secrets. There is one thing that Eduardo needs to hear, though.  
  
“You were Mark’s best friend,” Chris states, and it’s deliberate, that it’s a statement. “That has never been in doubt to anyone but you, Wardo. And I used to think – I’m sorry if this is insensitive of me, but I used to think it was your own insecurities that made you unsure. It was just so obvious, that you thought of Mark as your best friend and that he returned the sentiment. But now…now I wonder if Mark tried so hard to hide his non-platonic feelings for you that he sometimes went too far, hid too much, acted more distant than he meant to.”  
  
“I…I really think you’re reading too much into this, Chris,” says Eduardo.  
  
_And I think you’re not reading enough into it,_ Chris thinks but doesn’t say. Because he has his opinions but no proof, and maybe that’s what Eduardo needs, evidence too undeniable to be misinterpreted or written off. Because Chris believes that Mark cares about Eduardo and always did, but he isn’t certain – isn’t certain if that’s true, or if it’s enough.  
  
“I think that you’re freaking out too much over this,” is what Chris says, and he ignores whatever it is Eduardo mutters under his breath at that. “Mark may be attracted to you, but I’m fairly certain he’s aware there is no chance of dating or sex or something. If Mark has a goal in all this, I believe it’s to make you understand that he did consider you a friend, despite what he did, and maybe to see if you would consider being friends again.”  
  
Eduardo laughs a little, and the worst part is, he sounds genuinely amused, like he’s at a funeral but can’t stop giggling. “Chris – sorry, you just…oh God – I’m sorry, but you’re – you’re so off-base here, I have to either laugh or – or…” He clears his throat. “Sorry.”  
  
“Whatever happened in New York,” Chris says softly, “you can tell me. You know that, right?”  
  
Eduardo exhales loudly. “I – I know. Thanks, Chris. You’re a really good friend. I’ll have Ava and my publicist take care of denying this thing with Tony, yeah? You don’t need more on your plate.”  
  
There’s something in Eduardo’s voice Chris hasn’t heard for years, something…fragile. All he can do is shut his eyes and murmur, “Thank you.”  
  
It’s not until after they’ve hung up that Chris realizes – Eduardo never answered his question.  
  
\--  
  
The night before he flies back to California, Eduardo calls Sean, because he needs a distraction.  
  
Suzana would call him out on acting weird immediately and want to talk about _his feelings_, and thus must be avoided at all costs (Eduardo mentally adds her to his list, below his father and above that cousin who tweets about everything from his grocery shopping to his bowel movements). Chris is stressed out enough for ten people. He’s not listening to Anthony ramble about “yaoi fangirls” again. There are a few colleagues he’s friendly enough with to merit a social call, but Eduardo prefers to keep his professional and private lives as separate as possible.

Which leaves Dustin or Sean, and Eduardo cannot talk to Dustin of the Crazy Theories right now. Which says a lot about just how crazy his theories are, if _Sean_ is the more reasonable one.  
  
(The same Sean who once left Eduardo a voicemail in which he very seriously detailed a theory that the Smurfs were going to die out as a result of inbreeding because _“there’s only one Smurfette, man, that’s just _science_!”_)  
  
“Distract me,” Eduardo says as soon as Sean picks up.  
  
“Well, well, look at you being all ‘hellos are beneath me’. I’m so _proud_, dude! Though I have to say I wasn’t expecting you to be over the whole ‘Mark wants to bang me’ thing yet.”  
  
Eduardo groans and thumps his head back against the wall, and then tries it again. Maybe if he keeps doing it, he’ll dislodge the parts of his brain that are storing that information.  
  
(Doubtlessly the same part of his brain that’s been making masturbation impossible lately. He still wakes up hard more often than not, but also feeling like he’d rather drown himself in the shower than jerk off in it.)  
  
“Hey, is that sound you being all woe-is-me-the-world-is-ending, or getting off? Because I think the latter would be an overshare.”  
  
Eduardo stops banging his head against the wall. “_Neither_, Jesus Christ, Sean!”  
  
“The former, I should have known.”  
  
“And you have no right to accuse anyone of oversharing. Ever.”  
  
Eduardo can’t even _look_ at feather dusters anymore without retching.  
  
Sean starts talking, telling stories that Eduardo suspects – and sincerely hopes – are wildly exaggerated. He moves the subject from the horrors of intellectual property law (anarchist, is the only way to describe his views) to blonde Russian triplets (obscene) to some new programming language (incomprehensible) to how to find quality absinthe in Prague (bullshitting) to the recent unusual behaviour of his neighbour _definitely_ meaning that he’s being spied on (typical).  
  
“Well, he’s either spying on me or he’s a pod person, Eduardo. There’s no other explanation! Or, well, I guess it could be Polyjuice Potion. I’m sure a real version exists. Those pharmaceutical companies, man, they have ins with the CIA -”  
  
“I warned you not to read _Harry Potter_,” Eduardo reminds him. “No good can come from a paranoid reading about a child soldier who channels his latent homosexual urges into obsessing over a classmate he supposedly hates.”  
  
“…you know, you became a lot less fun after dating that lit major,” Sean says. “_Harry Potter_ is made of win, and I will not have you ruin it for me like you ruined _Twilight_, with all your ‘that’s not romance, it’s stalking’ and ‘clearly the author completely missed the point of _Wuthering Heights_’. It’s like it’s your mission in life to harsh my squee.”  
  
“Please never use that phrase again.”  
  
“You see? No fun. But back to _Harry Potter_. Latent homosexual urges, Eduardo? Projecting much?”  
  
“Oh my God, I do not have latent-! Look, when I was younger, I thought I might be bi for a while, but nothing much ever came from it. I’m – I’m mostly straight.”  
  
“Yeah, so you keep saying. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”  
  
It _is_ starting to look increasingly likely that Eduardo ranks higher on the Kinsey scale than he thought. At least he _hopes_ that’s what it is, and not Mark, as always, being the variable that completely screws the median.  
  
_Skews. _Skews_ the median. That was in no way a Freudian slip. Nope._  
  
“Have you even read _Hamlet_?” Eduardo demands, though he wouldn’t be surprised if Sean could impress a lit professor with his comparisons of the existentialist and psychoanalytic interpretations and debate how it influenced James Joyce.  
  
Right before asking for some weed.  
  
“Hey, I made an awesome Laertes in high school. Standing ovations, bouquets of flowers, crying audience members, the whole deal.”  
  
“The crying I can believe.”

“Seriously, Eduardo, you’re telling me that back in the day, before you and Mark went all Greek tragedy on each other, you never wanted to tap that?”  
  
“No,” Eduardo says truthfully. “I never wanted – I wasn’t interested in Mark that way. Couldn’t you tell, with all the superpowers of human observation you claim to have?”  
  
“I could totally tell,” Sean insists. “By the end of that first dinner, it was evident to me that Mark, to quote the illustrious wordsmith Seth MacFarlane, wanted to plow that until next July.”  
  
Eduardo chokes on his own spit.  
  
“It was equally evident that you were off in Oblivious Land about it. How’s it going, now that you’ve finally left?”  
  
“You were supposed to _distract me_,” Eduardo does not whine. Really, he doesn’t. Any whine-like sounds in the area? Totally not him.  
  
“And you were supposed to call me _after_ you were over this stage. It’s like listening to Ned Flanders freak-diddly-out.”  
  
“Do not talk about Flanders to me,” Eduardo growls. This situation is going to ruin _The Simpsons_ for him until the end of time.  
  
“Wow, okay, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m not equipped to deal with. You ever need the potential of new technology explained to a bunch of businessmen with their minds stuck in the 1950s and silver spoon-related constipation, or plausible excuses for not going into work, or a way out of a mess with a Mexican drug cartel, hit me up. But I can’t cope with you, like, vomiting feelings all over me.”  
  
“But, Sean -”  
  
“Adiós, my melodramatic Brazilian friend!”  
  
“That isn’t even _Portuguese_, you -”  
  
Dial tone. That asshole.  
  
\--  
  
Dustin stays late to make sure that Chris doesn’t overdo it yet again. After shoeing him off at seven, he checks in on Mark, but doesn’t attempt to convince him to go home at a rational hour, not when he’s like this.  
  
Instead, he enters Mark’s office, takes a peek at his code, and steals – er, _borrows_ – a pack of red vines. He sits on the floor in front of Mark’s couch and chews on one end of the delicious candy. He waits.  
  
Finally, just as Dustin is beginning to nod off, Mark says, “It’s like I’m speaking a foreign language all of a sudden.”  
  
Dustin doesn’t point out that to most people, Mark might as well be speaking a foreign language sometimes. He doesn’t point out that it may be unreasonable to expect Eduardo to still be fluent. He does, however, point out that “foreign languages can be translated, dude. Hello, Babel Fish?”  
  
Mark launches into a vicious diatribe about Yahoo!’s apps, because his weird hang-ups about expressing emotions beyond annoyance, disdain or smugness make him uncomfortable even when he’s only discussing feelings in vague, figurative terms.  
  
Personally, Dustin thinks it’s ill-advised for Mark to try, at this stage. Even if he managed to get his point across with no room for misunderstanding – which is a pretty big if – Eduardo might simply not believe him. Eduardo will only believe it if he can manage to trust Mark, which he doesn’t, and really, who can blame him?  
  
It’s unlikely that he’ll achieve his goal, whatever it is, and that goal is still less than what he really wants.  
  
But Dustin has known that Mark’s mind is made up ever since the one-night stand’s story broke and Mark just bit his lip contemplatively and refused to combat it. He has some sort of aim here, and Mark wouldn’t be Mark if he didn’t pursue what he wants with a single-minded intensity that most people would consider obsessive and borderline pathological.  
  
(Dustin doesn’t. He loves code just as much as Mark does. He knows the thrill of being lost in it for days, and only feeling regret over idiotic interruptions like the need to eat or sleep or not be on fire.)  
  
And so he simply asks, “You could totally come up with a better translation algorithm, though…right?”  
  
“An HMT, maybe,” Mark says thoughtfully, and Dustin can’t tell if Mark is still being metaphorical or if he’s been derailed into genuinely considering the advantages of a hybrid approach in computational linguistics.  
  
Either way, he needs someone to distract him from whatever happened with Eduardo in New York and whatever is going to happen when he gets back in less than twenty-four hours. Dustin leaps to his feet and picks a fight about C++.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N:_ I continue to be so, so flattered and thankful for all the support I’ve received writing this fic. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! I was so nervous to start writing in this fandom, and while I’m still kind of terrified after each new chapter posting, I breathe again and grin like a moron when I see feedback. <3  
  
Which is why I wanted to leave a note about why I’m going to try to curb my replies to comments. I reread every single one multiple times, and I want to say thank you for every single one, but I feel bad for contributing to another potential overflow post and I’ve realized my replies have been running a serious risk of having potential spoilers or interfering with the whole ‘show, don’t tell’ concept. People have different opinions on Mark’s behaviour and motives and Eduardo’s perceptions, and I _**love**_ that, so the last thing I want to do is jump in when I’m coming from a perspective of knowing what’s going on in Mark’s head and how everything will turn out. So often I want to reply with a rambling discussion of the movie/character interpretations/this fic/life in general, but you don’t come here for that; you come here to read a story.  
  
So from here on out – I thank you all profusely, and I will try to keep my natter to a minimum. :)  
\--  
  
Chris, Eduardo decides, is a god among men. Instead of forcing Eduardo to go back to the Facebook offices, he suggested discussing the upcoming press conference over lunch. In other words, on neutral ground, in the form of a private room at a restaurant that knows discretion is key to an elite clientele.  
  
Eduardo is a ball of nerves anyway (he considers diving out an open window when the maître d’ tells him the other three members of his party have already arrived; it’s only a three-storey jump, he’s watched enough action movies, he’d be _fine_), but it’s the thought that counts.  
  
“Hey, Wardo, how was the District?” Chris asks with a brightness that only a trained eye could tell is forced.  
  
“Too many politicians, as always,” Eduardo says, jocular tone equally forced.  
  
“The central problem of politics, naturally.”  
  
“Hey, Dustin,” says Eduardo, and receives only a nod in response. “Hey, Mark.”  
  
It might be fake, but it is the friendliest Eduardo has been towards Mark in years. Chris and Dustin both stare at him, but Eduardo watches Mark. He watches him not pause in his typing, not glance up, not react at all except for a blasé, “Hey.”  
  
For a moment, Eduardo wonders if Mark is trying to passive-aggressively pick a fight (possible) or if he’s genuinely absorbed in whatever he’s doing on his laptop (probable) or if he’s maybe almost as upset as Dustin thinks he is (unlikely). Then he reminds himself that there’s no point to asking questions he will never get the answers to and sits down.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says with yet more forced cheer, “let’s get started.”  
  
Fortunately, he does most of the talking. Eduardo isn’t sure he could speak through the lump that isn’t so much caught in his throat as it is filling his lungs, his stomach, pressing against his ribs and his windpipe.  
  
It’s a lot easier to ignore the maelstrom of his feelings towards Mark when they aren’t in the same (room, state, continent) place. Not so much when Eduardo can’t ignore him. When he can’t get Mark’s mouth or hands out of his peripheral vision. When he can’t keep from remembering Dustin and Chris’s words, and wondering.  
  
He still finds it extremely unlikely that Mark is…hurting, for lack of a better term, or that he’s interested in being friends again. So unlikely that Eduardo doesn’t spend much time contemplating either remote possibility.  
  
But the thing he can’t stop thinking about – it doesn’t really matter what Mark’s motives are or whether he deserved the way Eduardo expressed his wrath. What Mark does and says and thinks are beyond his control. How he responds to Mark, on the other hand, is not.  
  
And Eduardo does not like how he’s been responding lately. Has _never_ liked behaving like this.  
  
(Going along with Facemash, responding to Sean’s rudeness and condescension in kind, freezing the account, bringing up Mark’s cheating in art history – what did any of it ever accomplish but making him feel disappointed in himself?)

His father might think he’s weak and sentimental, Suzana might think he’s too nice for his own good, most people might think him idealistic – Eduardo doesn’t care. He’s paid for and learned from his mistakes, is no longer the naïve and trusting boy he used to be, but he refuses to become cold and cynical and ruthless in response. And if Eduardo refused to let betrayal and humiliation and pain unlike any he’d ever known change him, _break_ him, then he’ll be damned if he lets his own temper accomplish it.  
  
So. Mark can be an asshole if he wants, and Eduardo can get angry at him for it, but he doesn’t have to resort to petty retaliatory behaviour that benefits no one, that isn’t _him_.  
  
“Would you gentlemen care for any appetizers?” the waiter asks.  
  
Eduardo wouldn’t, has no appetite, but he knows that to take the high road, he’ll have to make a first step in that direction. And actions speak louder than words.  
  
“Escargot, please,” he says.  
  
Mark stops typing and Chris looks at him funny; he knows Eduardo doesn’t like the texture of escargot.  
  
(_“I do actually have some food preferences, you know,”_ Mark grumbled at him once in Kirkland’s dining hall, after Dustin made fun of him for eating a moldy muffin while coding. _“I know,”_ Eduardo said. _“Aside from the obvious – red vines and Mountain Dew and Red Bull – there’s pizza, as long as it doesn’t have pineapple. Fries with a fuckton of salt. Virtually any type of beer. And escargot, of all things, if they aren’t breaded.”_ And he felt a bit embarrassed, when Mark raised his eyebrows and said he was pretty sure even his mom didn’t know his tastes so well.)  
  
“They aren’t breaded, are they?” Eduardo asks.  
  
“No, sir, they’re _à la bourguignonne_.”  
  
Mark finally looks straight at Eduardo, the eye contact like a punch to the diaphragm. The weight in his chest tightens, vice-like, and for a few seconds he can’t breathe. Mark’s expression is blank, but his eyes are searching, focused.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and it’s a struggle to stare back, to let Mark look, to let himself hope that his gesture won’t be thrown back in his face.  
  
(To have any sort of hope at all, when it comes to Mark.)  
  
Mark doesn’t nod or soften or falter. But he shuts his laptop.  
  
Eduardo sags in his chair, relieved, light, and feeling better than he has in weeks. He risks another glance at Mark, and is surprised to see that he looks a little less tense too. His shoulders aren’t hunched anymore, the tightness around his mouth has eased, and Eduardo hadn’t realized he noticed either of those things until he notes their absence.  
  
He shouldn’t be noticing them. He shouldn’t be noticing that there are still dark circles around Mark’s eyes; that his hair looks flat in the way it used to get when his head hadn’t touched a pillow in far too long; that both of his hands are in the front pocket of his hoodie and, if this were college, Eduardo would guess that Mark’s hands were fisting the fabric and are only now starting to unclench. He shouldn’t be noticing any of that.  
  
Eduardo looks at the bottle of San Pellegrino instead.  
  
Chris and Dustin are doing their weird bordering-on-telepathic form of communication through meaningful looks (Chris) and cartoonish facial expressions (Dustin), the waiter is standing there awkwardly, Eduardo is staring at sparkling water like it holds the meaning of life, and then a phone rings. Everyone checks his cell except Dustin, who comments, “Please, like I’d use such a generic ringtone.”  
  
“I have to take this, excuse me,” says Chris, making an apologetic face at Eduardo before he leaves, followed shortly by the waiter.

“I think we should order alcohol now,” Eduardo says, “if we have to keep talking publicity.”  
  
And for a horrifying moment afterwards, he thinks he’s stepped wrong, his attempt at friendliness gone sour, remembering Mark’s critique of his drinking habits, his stuttering that Eduardo was drunk when he suggested Mark wouldn’t say no to him if it concerned sex, his mouth on a champagne flute and later on –  
  
But Mark snorts and says, “A lot of it. I’ve tried to tell Chris if he wants me to be less ‘terrifying’ in interviews, I should get to drink before, during and after.”  
  
“You and the interviewer both,” says Eduardo.  
  
“And impair what little intellectual capability they possess even further? It would render my attempts at explanation equivalent to trying to teach rocket science to ducks.”  
  
“That is quite possibly insulting to ducks.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “They had it coming.”  
  
Dustin is gaping at them. Eduardo is surprised himself; he didn’t think it would be this easy to feign friendliness, didn’t expect Mark to go along with it to this extent. Frankly, the latter is downright suspicious.  
  
“I don’t think,” Eduardo says, “it’s terribly reasonable to hate an entire species based on your irrational dislike of a cartoon character, Mark.”  
  
“Dustin did Donald Duck impersonations for two weeks straight at the end of freshman year. _Two weeks_, Wardo.”  
  
The nickname makes Eduardo’s breath hitch, makes him think of Mark gasping it in that alley –  
  
“Excuse me,” Dustin says, all overstated outrage, “for trying to cheer you up during the summer holidays, Mark.”  
  
“You didn’t cheer me up. You made me plot murder.”  
  
“It’s true,” Eduardo vouches. “I received a few alarming emails with sketches of your demise attached.” He burst into laughter in front of his father when he saw the one involving a snorkel and an egg beater.  
  
It’s one of those things Eduardo forgot (or tried to), one of those things that made being Mark’s friend so damn _fun_.  
  
Of course, Eduardo remembers Mark doodling in a notepad instead of paying attention during the depositions. So in the end, it all…comes nowhere near evening out.  
  
Dustin is now reciting menu options in a duck voice and Eduardo tries to find it funny, tries not to let his mood go black, tries out the exercises his therapist once taught him. But he suspects that while Dr. Wu would agree with his resolution to keep in control of his emotions, she would say he was going too far, trying too hard in an attempt to avoid another confrontation or to avoid thinking too much about the fact that he basically dared his ex-best friend to blow him and Mark fucking _did it_.  
  
Deep down, Eduardo knows he’s putting a band-aid on a bullet wound here, but it’s a temporary solution and he can’t think of any alternatives.  
  
“…and if you think I can’t think of at least a dozen ways to kill you using only this fork,” Mark is ranting, “your grasp of sanity is even more tenuous than I thought.”  
  
“You can’t kill me,” Dustin says stubbornly, “there’s a witness.”  
  
“Yes, but once I explain you to the jury, you’d lose all sympathy,” Eduardo says, and Dustin looks increasingly ganged up on as Mark chimes in.  
  
“And then the judge would reward me for doing a public service by eliminating you.”  
  
“If this were the UK, Mark would be knighted,” Eduardo adds.  
  
“You’re both evil,” Dustin whines. “I miss _Chris_…”  
  
As if he heard him, Chris appears in the doorway seconds later. “We’re going to have to cut this short. The image consultant is at Facebook now and wants to meet with me and Mark immediately. Wardo, we’ll see you tomorrow morning?”  
  
Eduardo says “yep”, and it doesn’t feel terrifying.

Fortunately, the publicist Ava hired for Eduardo is agreeable to Chris’s plan for the press conference. He has no desire to go through another round of negotiation with someone like Gretchen again. Speaking to her over the phone and through a few email exchanges while working on the press statement made Chris feel a rare bout of pity for Mark.  
  
Even more fortunately, Eduardo and Mark seem to have set aside their hostility for the time being. There have been no arguments this morning, and before Dustin was pulled away for some programming issue, he kept looking at the two of them like they’d grown extra heads.  
  
Eduardo, predictably, is patient, cooperative and charming with the image consultant and wardrobe staff. He dresses as he’s told – which essentially consists of wearing a slightly less conservative and fashionable suit than he would usually wear. He accepts that one always has to wear a little make-up on TV without a fuss. He listens attentively to advice on what phrases to steer clear of using, how to avoid answering a question without appearing to be avoiding it, when to smile or make a small joke, and so on. He doesn’t really require coaching.  
  
Mark, equally predictably, is impatient, cantankerous and snarky. He argues against wearing a suit, refuses point-blank to wear any make-up, and ignores the image consultant altogether. He is really beyond the help of all but the most basic media coaching.  
  
Still, for Mark, that’s par for the course. His mood is in fact better than it has been in days; otherwise, at least one of the people from wardrobe would have fled in tears within ten minutes. Chris is somewhat less worried that Mark will revert to the blunt disdain for the press of his younger years. He takes a few antacids and practices breathing exercises, but that’s nothing compared to what he was dreading.  
  
“Wardo, you settle this,” Mark says, turning away from the exasperated stylist. “Do I really need to wear a suit?”  
  
Eduardo – dressed in double-breasted Dolce himself – looks a bit like a deer in the headlights for a moment. Aside from the fact that he kind of always looks like that, it’s curious, Chris notes. After all, Eduardo’s sartorial obsession is only mildly less obnoxious than Sean’s at times (if Chris never hears the two of them debate the artistic merit of Viktor & Rolf’s runway shows again, it will be too soon).  
  
Eduardo looks at the suit the stylist is holding up, at Mark, back at the suit, back at and then up and down Mark, and then at the suit again. All in rapid succession and with a look on his face that makes Chris suspect he’s blushing under the make-up. Curiouser and curiouser.  
  
“I, um, think that you should wear whatever you want,” Eduardo says, and he’s as close to mumbling as he ever gets.  
  
Mark is studying him instead of listening to the stylist, who is now being supported by the image consultant, and Eduardo is looking at the opposite side of the room and fidgeting with his tie.  
  
If Dustin were here, he’d start quoting _Star Wars_ – ‘I have a bad feeling about this’. Chris just rubs his stomach, feeling that gnawing, anxious ache make a vicious comeback. He should really speak to his doctor.  
  
“Mark, put on the damn suit,” Chris says finally.  
  
His eyes still and speculative on Eduardo, Mark says, “Yeah, okay.”  
  
And fuck if that isn’t the most suspicious thing of all.

The press conference goes well. Chris is starting to think he might not develop an ulcer after all.  
  
The four of them end up in Mark’s office, naturally, since Mark gets twitchy (well…twitch_ier_) if he’s been kept away from coding for too long. While he types away, off in his own universe, Chris has been keeping Eduardo occupied with assurances that the worst of the media crisis should be over by now, questions about his job and his opinion on the latest moves of the Federal Reserve, and (damn Dustin) some discussion of his own love life.  
  
“- just wasn’t good enough for you,” Dustin argues.  
  
“You say that about everyone I date,” Chris reminds him.  
  
“Because it’s true! But if someone is going to try to deserve you, he’d better be awesome. Am I right, Wardo?”  
  
“You are.”  
  
Chris is tempted to bring up the fact that Dustin’s dislike of Romeo was based entirely on his name and that Eduardo is perfectly fine with egos as big as James’s (or bigger, *cough*Mark*cough*) as long as he thinks it’s justified. But this old-new friendliness feels fragile, and Chris has always been a little too prone to protectiveness.  
  
“Besides, as if you didn’t go all mama bear on Megan,” Dustin says.  
  
“That woman did not smile,” Chris points out. “Ever. It was creepy. You deserve someone who shares your sense of humour…if such a person exists.”  
  
“Chris, I am the light of your life and you know it.”  
  
“That _bitch_,” Eduardo says out of the blue. He’s staring at his iPhone, the fond tone and smile belying his words. He’s got it to his ear in the next moment, ignoring the rest of the room and his usually painfully good manners.  
  
Suzana, then, Chris knows. Eduardo is only like this when it comes to the person he considers his best friend.  
  
Judging from the abrupt cessation of typing from Mark and the storm clouds that might as well be gathering above him, he’s aware of that tendency too.  
  
“You are a lying liar who lies,” Eduardo says, and then laughs delightedly at whatever insulting thing Suzana says back. “Uh huh…well, of course she did, Ava knows if I couldn’t stop you from coming, I’d want you with me…no, don’t be ridiculous, I’ll pick you up… Suzy, whether I have a car or not isn’t the point! My jet-lagged best friend is flying over just to see me; I’m going to pick her up at the airport.”  
  
Mark mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “bitch”. Chris and Dustin exchange a look.  
  
“It’s not up for debate; you can tell me when your flight arrives or Ava will…that’s what I thought. And we’re going out for dinner, after… No, don’t bother arguing, I know you too well, you’ll turn your nose up at the airplane food and try to sneak a smoke in the bathroom without getting fined or arrested… I don’t care, you’re not smoking!” Eduardo rolls his eyes even as he grins. “I’ll take that as a compliment… Yeah. You too. Bye.”  
  
“So I finally get to meet the legendary Suzy,” Chris says, to stave off Eduardo noticing Mark’s impression of Hannibal Lector.  
  
“Yeah, in a week or two, she’s not a hundred percent sure yet,” Eduardo says with a smile that reaches his eyes, makes Chris realize abruptly that he hasn’t seen the expression in a long time. “I wouldn’t recommend calling her that, though; I’m the only one permitted nicknames, lunatic that she is.”  
  
His voice is unmistakably fond, and out of the corner of his eye, Chris can see Mark’s hands ball into fists.  
  
He hopes his read on Suzana as someone who can handle herself is correct, or else Mark will _annihilate_ her. Chris has only the things Eduardo has told him to go by, but his impression is that she’s smart, a nerd beneath her elegant façade, and genuinely kind – the sort of person who will suffer fools with patience and assholes with grace, but will not take shit from anyone who pushes them too far.  
  
Like Erica.  
  
A little like Eduardo too, come to think of it.  
  
(Chris knows his own perspective is biased, after seeing Eduardo at his worst, betrayed and depressed. He’s seen him vulnerable, flayed raw. But Eduardo never dropped the social activities that Mark derided, never left Harvard for Palo Alto, never considered not seeing his lawsuit through to the bitter end. At a certain point, Eduardo cannot be pushed, by his father or Mark or anyone.)

“Why is she coming here?” Mark asks.  
  
“To visit me,” Eduardo says and it’s one of the few times there’s no defensiveness in his voice or demeanor around Mark, no automatic tension, no indication that Eduardo is bracing himself for an attack.  
  
Mark’s eyes snap to him like he’s noticed it too. After a moment, he looks away with a vaguely disgruntled air – but no snide remark about Suzana’s timing or Eduardo needing someone to hold his hand or any of the kind of venom Chris would have expected.  
  
He raises his eyebrows at Dustin. _Did you see what I just saw?_  
  
_Yes, I did._ Dustin trails his index finger down his cheek like he’s tracing a tear and pouts exaggeratedly. _Our dysfunctional little robot boy is growing up._  
  
Chris rolls his eyes. _Don’t say anything and ruin it._  
  
Dustin mimes zipping his lips shut.  
  
Eduardo is giving them both a weird look (_“your twin telepathy thing is really creepy, considering you’re not twins,”_ he said once, at Harvard. _“Thank God for that,”_ Chris replied promptly.). Of course, Eduardo then shoots a quizzical look at Mark (_still?_) and Mark shrugs (_you see what I have to put up with?_), so really, it’s complete hypocrisy.  
  
Chris can see the exact moment Eduardo realizes what he just did – the relaxed and friendly behaviour with Mark. He can see his good mood evaporate in the way his eyes dull, his posture tenses, his mouth thins. He can see the waver between panic and punishing himself.  
  
“I get to meet this Suzana person too, right?” says Dustin.  
  
Chris sends him a grateful look: _You sometimes have your uses._  
  
Dustin nods back sagely. _Damn straight._  
  
“I suppose you can,” Eduardo says slowly, like he’s not sure why Dustin would be interested and he’s trying to imply Dustin is imposing without being rude. “If you’d like.”  
  
“It’s settled then!” Dustin claps his hands and grins, an all too familiar grin that makes Chris, Eduardo and Mark all exchange _oh crap_ looks. “The fab four will all go out, with a lovely lady addition. It’ll be just like Harvard, that one time Mark brought Erica around, or whenever Wardo had a particularly clingy girlfriend.”  
  
“I never brought Erica around when all of us went out,” Mark says, pursuing faulty logic like a terrier after a small rodent.  
  
“You never brought her around much at all. So what?”  
  
“So you admit your comparison is flawed?”  
  
“I admit nothing! I met Erica once or twice.”  
  
Eduardo frowns thoughtfully. “You know, I only met her once too.”  
  
“I never met her at all,” Chris says, which is a little weird in retrospect, considering, “over the course of, what was it, five or six months?”  
  
Mark shrugs.  
  
“You don’t remember how long you two dated?”  
  
“Why would I?” Mark appears genuinely puzzled, as if Chris asked why he didn’t have pi memorized to a hundred decimal points.  
  
Although that’s actually more likely, with Mark.  
  
“I bet Mark doesn’t even remember how they met either,” says Dustin.  
  
Mark shrugs again.  
  
“Called it! Chris, pay up. $100.”  
  
“We didn’t bet!”  
  
“Wardo, you too.”  
  
“What Chris said.”  
  
“You’re both killjoys,” Dustin declares. “Also, thieves.”  
  
“I’m sure your balance sheet will recover eventually,” Chris says dryly, drawing a chuckle from Eduardo and a wounded look from Dustin.  
  
“Your lack of concern for my well-being is disturbing, Christopher. Almost, dare I say it, Mark-like.”  
  
“No one could be less concerned for your well-being than I am,” Mark says flatly.  
  
Chris rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop smiling. They’re majorly off-topic, and he’s surprised Eduardo has let it go on for so long, has participated in it at all – this camaraderie that is both familiar and fresh, bittersweet in a way he seldom permits himself to feel. Chris is even more surprised Mark hasn’t kicked them out of his office yet so he can get back to coding without interruption.  
  
Then he thinks about how Mark could have lashed out defensively, jealously, at Eduardo earlier, and didn’t; how he and Eduardo briefly exchanged non-verbal, non-hostile communication; how Mark didn’t protest Dustin’s going out together plan, despite its flawed comparison and the inclusion of Eduardo’s new, female best friend.  
  
And then Chris is honestly unsure whether he should be hopeful or terrified.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N:_ Thank you so much to everyone who is reading/commenting! I’m thrilled and grateful about the response to this fic, and everyone’s insightful looks at our favourite boys. On that front – Eduardo and Mark are both making progress, but it’s going to be *slow* and not all of it is going to be smooth. There’s still a lot of misunderstanding, miscommunication and mistrust there.  
  
Now onto the next part, wherein marginal progress is made and I drop a ridiculous amount of pop culture references.  
  
\--  
  
It’s strangely easy for Eduardo, pretending to be friends with Mark again.  
  
Too easy.  
  
_Frighteningly_ easy.  
  
\--  
  
“You’re wrong,” says Mark, clipped and matter-of-fact like he’s pointing out an obvious fallacy but is willing to educate the idiotic masses. “Inara is _clearly_ the most attractive person on _Serenity_.”  
  
“No,” says Eduardo, swallowing a bite of tempura, “she’s just the most _conventionally_ attractive. Like, classically beautiful.”  
  
“I don’t know, she kind of has a weirdly long neck,” says Chris, as if his opinion is relevant when it comes to judging female hotness. Dustin points this out, and Chris starts arguing with him about aesthetic appreciation.  
  
Mark ignores them both and jabs his chopsticks at Eduardo. “You just supported my point instead of refuting it, Wardo.”  
  
“Hardly. The most _overall_ attractive one is River.”  
  
“The mentally disturbed teenager.”  
  
“Played by _Summer Glau_,” Eduardo says, as if this is all the argument he needs. Dustin is inclined to agree.  
  
“I’ve always found her overrated,” Mark says.  
  
Eduardo and Chris both gasp because, hello, _sacrilege_, but Dustin sees through Mark and rolls his eyes.  
  
“Mark, I don’t think you can play the whole ‘I’m superior because I don’t like popular things like the common morons of the world’, considering, you know, _Facebook_.”  
  
“I _invented_ Facebook, I didn’t jump on a bandwagon.”  
  
“Whatever,” Dustin says, “Inara and River are both hot, but not as hot as Kaylee.”  
  
Both Mark and Eduardo shoot him rather insulting looks, and then descend into bickering.  
  
(“So Mark likes the tall, dark and beautiful Brazilian who oozes class and has a great smile, while Eduardo prefers the slim, pale, messy-haired genius who’s nuts and unnerving to most people,” Dustin says to Chris later. “_Shocking_.”)  
  
\--  
  
Dustin somehow lures them all into playing video games at his house like it’s 2003.  
  
He is predictably smug about beating both Eduardo and Mark – neither of whom have kept up with playing much – and predictably dramatic when Chris (again, predictably) kicks his ass.  
  
Chris’s ex was even more obsessed with Xbox and Wii than Dustin, okay? It’s not Chris's fault, and it does not in any way “undermine the argument that he’s the mature one” (Mark) or “prove that he’s actually a supernatural being” (Dustin).  
  
Somehow this leads to Chris admitting this ex-boyfriend was a complete ass in other ways, including being unfaithful. Which inevitably leads to having to talk Dustin out of launching a revenge hack on his behalf and Mark from “supervising” it, and to Eduardo laughing helplessly into his hands and saying he’s already done his part by having a tub of ice cream delivered to Chris’s apartment and letting him bitch over Skype.  
  
“Ice cream? You two are such _girls_,” says Dustin, as if he didn’t literally cry on Chris’s shoulder after his break-up with Delia.  
  
\--  
  
“Most embarrassing thing to happen to you, ever,” says Dustin gleefully. “_Go_.”  
  
This is clearly his favourite game, and Mark’s least favourite, judging by the way his face shifts from blank to scowl and his arms have folded across his chest.  
  
It’s kind of cute.  
  
_No._ Eduardo curses his stupid, stupid brain. _No, Mark is not _cute_, he is anything but _cute_, and the word ‘cute’ should be removed from my vocabulary and from all the dictionaries in the world._  
  
It’s childish, that’s what, Mark’s even sticking his bottom lip out slightly like a child or like Dustin (same difference), and Mark must have been biting his bottom lip again, it’s red, or maybe that’s from eating too many red vines instead of actual food, and –  
  
And maybe Eduardo shouldn’t be staring at Mark’s mouth so much. Or at all.

“Wardo’s has to be that bus thing with the Phoenix,” Chris says, because, again, the universe clearly has something against Eduardo.  
  
“I have blocked that memory out with sheer horror. Also alcohol. I’m pretty sure there’s an hour in there ten times worse than all that initiation shit put together.”  
  
“Even worse than the chicken?” Dustin asks and Eduardo immediately looks at Mark, remembers his faintly amused _“I can’t have this, Wardo”_; remembers his cold eyes and colder shrug, _“oops”_.  
  
The air is growing awkward, and Dustin and Chris look confused because they weren’t at the depositions, and Mark has gone quiet and expressionless at the mention of the Phoenix Club.  
  
“You know what’s the funniest part of the chicken thing?” Eduardo says. “That Sean still bugs me to explain it.”  
  
“_Still_?” Dustin plays along instantly.  
  
“At least twice a year – ‘seriously, man, what’s the deal with the chicken?’ He’s obsessed.”  
  
“And you never tell him?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Purely for shits and giggles?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“_Nice_.”  
  
\--  
  
“Do you think,” Eduardo asks Suzana over the phone one night, half-asleep, “that if you try hard enough not to think about something, eventually it will work?”  
  
“No,” she says. “If I tell you ‘don’t think about elephants’, what do you think about?”  
  
“Elephants,” Eduardo slurs, eyes drifting shut.  
  
Floppy-eared bastards.  
  
\--  
  
“Mark.” Chris holds up a copy of a magazine interview Mark gave several months back. “Clearly we need to have the discussion about flame wars and not starting them. Again.”  
  
Dustin’s inclined to agree – he might share most of Mark’s opinions on the pros and cons of various programming languages, and his opinions on the appeal of trolling, but he’s genuinely concerned about Chris’s blood pressure these days. There’s a vein in his forehead that’s taken on a life of its own, which is worrying, even if it does look kind of hypnotically…squishy.  
  
Mark scoffs and doesn’t stop coding, though at least he doesn’t put his headphones on in a completely passive-aggressive move. “This, from a guy who was once involved in the shipping wars of the _Harry Potter_ fandom.”  
  
Eduardo stops skimming his emails to look at Chris incredulously. “Seriously?”  
  
Chris turns pink, because he’s adorable like that. “Uh…that’s not quite -”  
  
“It is,” Mark says. “I’ve hacked your browser history, Chris; you have no secrets from me.”  
  
Eduardo laughs, and the sound of Mark’s typing ceases with it.  
  
“I,” says Chris, red now, “I just innocently posted something on a forum and these fangirls jumped all over me -”  
  
Mark looks at Eduardo. “If ‘innocently posting’ means ‘writing an essay about Harry’s One True Love’.”  
  
Eduardo laughs harder. “Oh – oh my God -”  
  
“There were quotes and everything. From the books, the movies, the author. And a Mariah Carey song.”  
  
Eduardo is clutching his stomach with laughter now, leaning back against the couch and shaking with it.  
  
Chris is still stammering, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people to be civil when debating -”  
  
Dustin can’t help but join in laughing now, because _really_? Civility on the Internet, in an argument? He kind of wants to pinch Chris’s cheeks and coo.  
  
“- or to have a more rational reason for liking a certain pairing than – you know what, fuck off, all of you.” Chris points at them each in turn. “Like you don’t wage war with people who disagree with your theories about _A Song of Ice and Fire_, Mark, or like Dustin doesn’t have a ‘Team Jacob’ t-shirt – don’t even, Dustin, I’ve seen it – and, Eduardo, you’ve read _Star Trek_ fanfiction and blamed it on Suzana…”  
  
\--  
  
It’s weird and it’s worrying, how Eduardo finds himself falling into old habits. Like, _really_ old habits; it’s been years since he thought he and Mark were best friends. How is it that he so quickly starts bantering again, worrying about Mark’s eating and sleeping again, feeling like he can maybe parse Mark’s every word and expression and gesture again?  
  
Seriously. How?  
  
Eduardo catches himself most of the time, but not always.  
  
Sometimes he catches himself watching Mark and wondering: _What are you up to? Why are you acting like you enjoy this phony friendship when the real thing meant nothing to you? What’s your end game here?_

\--

Chris switches tabs on his browser, between articles about the recent antics of the Facebook founders. There remains a lot of speculation about Mark and Eduardo, but the two of them calmly refuting recent allegations and refusing to comment on “resolved legal issues” has cooled some of the more scandalous rumours.  
  
Still. More than one journalist noticed that at no point did Mark refute the allegation that set everything off in the first place.  
  
Chris sighs and glances up. Eduardo and Mark are both staring at their own laptop screens. The room is quiet but for the clacking of keyboards. Chris wonders what Dustin is doing.  
  
“Shit,” Eduardo says.  
  
“What,” Mark says without looking up.  
  
“My computer, it’s – damn, I think it just crashed or something.”  
  
“BSoD?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Mark reaches across his desk with one hand, flapping it impatient in a “gimme” gesture, still without glancing up.  
  
Chris is prepared to joke about Mark’s perpetual childishness, but he looks at Eduardo and the joke shrivels and dies.  
  
Eduardo has his hands curled protectively around his laptop and he looks _terrified_. The expression passes over his face quickly, but not quickly enough. Mark catches the tail end when he glances over, saying, “I’ll take a -”  
  
He stops abruptly, staring at Eduardo.  
  
The silence is total now, and a thousand times heavier with the reminder of all the times in the past Eduardo would hand over his computer or his money (or his signature) to Mark without a second thought. With the reminder that even if Eduardo’s scars are not always obvious, they _are_ always there.  
  
“Or, Mark, you could do your own work and have one of our employees whose job it is to repair computers take a look,” Chris says diplomatically.  
  
“No,” Eduardo says before he’s even finished. “No. Not – _no_. I…there are – this is a company computer with client information on it and I signed an NDA when I was hired and it’s a firing offense to…I can’t hand it over to – to anyone.”  
  
Throughout his stammering speech, Eduardo’s face flickers with too many emotions, like he isn’t sure what he feels or what he thinks he should.  
  
And that’s the part that makes Chris’s eyes sting – not Eduardo’s hurt or his anger, but his _uncertainty_, even now.  
  
Mark’s eyes narrow, but he’s less angry than he is…Chris isn’t sure what, precisely.  
  
“So you’re going to wait until you get back to Singapore to use your computer,” Mark says with flat, doubtful disdain.  
  
Eduardo’s eyes flare with anger, which is at least better than terror, but Chris speaks up preemptively anyway. “You guys -”  
  
“I have colleagues here,” Eduardo says, icily polite, because the truth is, he can be passive-aggressive too. “It’s a simple enough matter to have Gretchen arrange for someone from their IT department sign an NDA and fix my computer.”  
  
“Someone here could do that,” Mark says promptly. “_I_ could do that. Chris, NDA.”  
  
“I don’t _carry them around with me_,” Chris says incredulously. Though, he considers, that might be helpful.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo says firmly, “you’re too busy and so is Chris. Not to mention that a maybe-broken laptop isn’t the end of the world, but our lawyers would probably act like it is if we call them up regarding an NDA over _tech support_.”  
  
Before Mark can respond with something crazy – like that he wouldn’t need to consult his lawyers, he’d sign without them – in some clumsy attempt to make a point Eduardo would inevitably misinterpret, Chris says, “Wardo’s right. Mark, get back to your reports and before you ask, yes, I know about the meeting with Marketing and you _are_ going to attend. I’ll ask Nadia to grab you a spare laptop, okay, Wardo?”  
  
“Thank you, but that’s unnecessary.” Eduardo is texting someone now; likely Ava. Within thirty seconds, he’s studying his screen and saying, “A new laptop will be delivered to my hotel within an hour.”  
  
“Are you sure your PA isn’t secretly magic?” Chris asks.  
  
Eduardo smiles, but he still looks tense. “I suspect Ava might be an agent of Skynet.”  
  
This, luckily, launches a lament for TSCC and gets them all back on even footing.  
  
It doesn’t stop Eduardo from looking relieved when he heads out or Mark from tuning out most of the meeting even though he doesn’t touch his laptop once.

\--

Eduardo keeps having dreams, or maybe nightmares, about that alleyway in New York.  
  
He wakes up hard, leaking pre-come and hating himself.  
  
He’s gradually losing the daily battles with himself to take a cold shower instead of jerking off, starting to rationalize that _it’s only a little fantasizing, that’s normal, it doesn’t mean anything_ (which is a complete lie) and that _there’s no reason he should suffer blue balls when it’s not like Mark has any qualms about getting off to thoughts of him_ (which is true, much too true).  
  
\--  
  
“You slept here,” Eduardo repeats, eyebrows approaching his hairline. “At the office.”  
  
Mark shrugs, and Eduardo glances at the line of his shoulders, the twitch of his mouth.  
  
Dustin has never been able to read Mark as well as Eduardo could, but he’s pretty sure Mark is feeling a bit defensive at a perceived reprimand. Eduardo, though, is only slightly less of an open book than he used to be. Dustin can clearly see him guess what Mark’s posture and shrug mean, and then second-guess, and then refuse to guess altogether.  
  
His chest tightens with something a little like pity, a little like guilt, and a lot like how he felt when Wardo said _“Mark doesn’t care about me and he never did”_ like it was a fucking _fact_.  
  
“It’s not the first time I’ve stayed here overnight,” Mark says with a shrug.  
  
The look on Eduardo’s face plainly declares that this makes the situation worse. He opens his mouth, but shuts it immediately.  
  
Huh. Dustin would have put money on Eduardo launching into a lecture/interrogation about healthy sleeping habits and nutrition, followed by scolding Dustin for not having the magical power to force Mark out of the office. Dustin was preparing a rousing speech in his own defense and everything, but Eduardo doesn’t lecture, doesn’t interrogate, doesn’t scold. He’s silent, and holding himself so stiff that Dustin wonders if he’s trying to impersonate a mannequin.  
  
“I have a couch here,” Mark adds, sounding awkward and almost a bit sheepish, like a child defending his raid of the cookie jar.  
  
Eduardo’s mouth quirks and his posture relaxes. “It’s an odd place to sleep when you have a _house_ nearby, Mark.”  
  
Mark relaxes too. “Like you haven’t slept in odd places.”  
  
“_Beds_. And never in an office.”  
  
“Who would put a _bed_ in an office, Wardo?”  
  
“A mattress company, probably.”  
  
Mark rolls his eyes and immediately starts critiquing Eduardo’s ability to pull off facetiousness, or lack thereof, but he’s smiling slightly.  
  
Dustin almost reminds them that one of the most frequent and odd places Wardo crashed in was Mark’s bed in Kirkland. But that would probably make things…awkward.  
  
(Dustin remembers coming back to the suite late one night during exams and being astonished to find Mark carefully pulling a textbook out from Eduardo’s sleeping, sprawled, starfish-like form. Dustin watched Mark take meticulous care not to wake Wardo while he removed sharp corners from the vicinity of his face. Dustin watched Mark look at Eduardo, something soft and scared in his expression, before he hunched his shoulders and turned to his laptop.)  
  
“…and where is Chris, anyway?” Eduardo looks at him expectantly, like Dustin is Chris’s keeper instead of vice versa.  
  
“Trying to…something about paparazzi and an injunction? I don’t know, he was muttering under his breath and ordering me out of his office at the same time, and that vein in his forehead is freaking me out. Despite its squishiness. I shall call him Squishy and he shall be my Squishy and he shall be mine.”  
  
Eduardo looks at him like he’s just declared that Sean is studying to become a priest. “_What_?”  
  
And that is how Dustin learns the horrifying truth – Eduardo has never seen _Finding Nemo_. Possibly even more horrifying, he does not seem very interested in remedying this tragedy even after Dustin explains to him why it is the best movie in the world. He also puts the kibosh on Dustin’s totally self-sacrificing plan to skip work so that the two of them can go watch it.  
  
And then Mark turns the conversation over to WALL-E, and Eduardo isn’t so unimpressed anymore. _Unfair_, Dustin thinks hotly. But unsurprising.  
  
\--  
  
Sometimes Eduardo worries that he’s not pretending at all.


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N:_ You guys continue to amaze me with your responses to this fic. I think some of my coworkers think I’m crazy (okay, _crazier_) with all the grinning I do whenever I check this page. Thank you all so much! <3 <3 <3  
\--  
  
Eduardo should have learned by now that good things never last for long. _Nothing gold can stay_, and all that. Or _you have the optimism of a child, Eduardo, and a slow one at that_, as his father would put it. Regardless, he should know from experience that when things seem great, they’re about to go to shit.  
  
He gets word from Ava that, despite Facebook’s press release and conference, the talk hasn’t died down in Singapore; instead, it’s renewed the old debate over 377A. The Board held a surprise meeting yesterday, and there are rumours that the CFO met with that prick Lewis who’s always resented Eduardo for getting the job he was after, and that Ravinder has been scouting Eduardo’s clients.  
  
He gets a phone call from his boss’s boss, calling him to a meeting in three days.  
  
He gets stuck alone with Mark in Dustin’s office as they wait for him so the three of them can go to lunch. God knows how Eduardo got talked into that in the first place.  
  
(He knows why. Universe, hatred, et cetera.)  
  
“You’re leaving?” Mark demands the moment Eduardo ends the call, before he can even panic properly. “Again?”  
  
“Have to,” Eduardo says. “Shit. _Shit_.”  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Eduardo ignores the completely un-Mark question and the even more un-Mark tone of concern, and types out an email to Ava. He needs a flight back home ASAP, as well as more information about what’s going on with his coworkers and his clients. He also sends a message to Suzana, telling her there’s no point in her flying out to visit anymore.  
  
“Wardo, you’ve gone kind of pale. Well, as pale as you ever get. What – is something wrong?”  
  
“That was the CEO of my company calling me back home for a meeting about ‘recent developments’ and my ‘future in the company’. So yeah, I’d say getting fired qualifies as something wrong.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean you’re fired. And if they _do_ fire you, sue them. You can’t treat an employee like that for…” Mark pauses, looks somewhere to the right of Eduardo’s head. “For things that are – personal.”  
  
“I have no desire to get involved in another lawsuit, Mark,” Eduardo says, looking back at his phone.  
  
“Yeah,” Mark agrees, “yeah, they are annoying.”  
  
“A complete waste of time,” Eduardo says bitterly, thinking out loud.  
  
“Yeah, of course, they – wait. Did you – was there subtext there?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I think there was subtext.”  
  
“Good for you.”  
  
“What did you mean by it? Were you – were you implying that you – that I –”  
  
Eduardo finally looks at Mark, mostly annoyed, but also the tiniest bit amused. “What, should people hold up a ‘subtext’ sign every time there might be something beneath the surface of what they’re saying?”  
  
Mark actually considers this for a moment, the freak. Eduardo has to bite back a smile.  
  
“It would be helpful,” Mark decides. “But, more importantly, you admitted there was subtext.”  
  
‘Subtext’ no longer sounds like a real word.  
  
Fortunately, Ava sends his flight details then, distracting him from Mark’s…Markness. “My flight leaves tonight, so I should probably go pack -”  
  
“After we have lunch,” Mark says. And then, as an afterthought, “With Dustin.”  
  
“Well, actually -”  
  
“He’ll be upset if you break our plans, and without even seeing him. Also, you said your flight was ‘tonight’, as in evening, so you’ll have enough time to go to lunch and to pack.”  
  
“But it’s an international flight. I should get there three hours early.”  
  
“Not if you check in online first, and I’m sure you’re flying first-class, so you can get through the baggage check quicker. When’s the flight?”  
  
“Ten. Mark -”  
  
“Plenty of time, then. I can drive you to the airport too.”  
  
“_What_?” Eduardo’s voice does not squeak on the word, it’s just…the bad acoustics in Dustin’s office. Or something. “No, no -”

“It will save you the time of having to call, wait for, and pay for a car service or a taxi, and you won’t have to pester Ava with such a trivial matter. Not to mention that any taxi carries the risk of a late or reckless or criminal driver. You must be aware of the threat of kidnappings of wealthy people, being from Brazil.”  
  
“Of course I’m _aware_ of the risk, but -”  
  
“So you see my point.” Mark nods, as if the matter has been settled.  
  
In a way, it has. Mark has successfully neutralized all the arguments Eduardo could make based on practicality, and he can’t say _I don’t want a favour from you_ or _I don’t want to be alone with you_ without ruining this friendly-but-not-friends thing they have going.  
  
“You’re busy with work, and I don’t want to inconvenience you -”  
  
“You’re not.”  
  
“You’d have to leave the office earlier.”  
  
“People are always telling me I should do that.”  
  
“You never listen.”  
  
“I can make an exception.”  
  
_But I don’t want you to make exceptions for me!_ Eduardo almost screams because it’s – it’s too much, too late, when all he used to want was for Mark to make exceptions for him. For _only_ him. For it to mean something that he did; for it to mean what Eduardo meant.  
  
A part of him still wants it.  
  
(A part of him wants it even more, and in quite a different way from when they were younger…)  
  
Which only makes the impulse to reject it, run away from it, that much stronger. He knows where it leads, wanting things he can’t have, wanting things from Mark, and it terrifies him more than the prospect of being fired ever could.  
  
“It’s just a car ride, Wardo,” Mark says quietly.  
  
Eduardo shuts his eyes. God, he must be pathetic, if _Mark_ of all people pities him. Poor Eduardo, so freaked out over one little car ride, still so scared of his ex-friend, still so _vulnerable_.  
  
On the other hand (because Dr. Wu and he talked extensively about his self-esteem issues and how they affected his interpretation of everything), Mark probably doesn’t pity him at all. No, he couldn’t. Mark’s just – he’s being manipulative. Wanting to get his way, and doing it passive-aggressively. Right.  
  
Of course, that begs the question of why Mark wants to do a mundane chore like drive Eduardo around instead of code. He’s kind of stumped on that one.  
  
“Let’s not give the press ammunition,” Eduardo says, and thank God, his voice comes out much calmer and more rational than he feels.  
  
“The only thing that can be inferred from someone taking someone else to the airport is that they’re friendly.”  
  
There’s a half-question mark there, and Eduardo can’t say no now. Damn it.  
  
“Fine. Just…fine. Come by at seven. And, um, thank you?”  
  
“Seven,” Mark repeats and scribbles on a nearby post-it a large 7 and nothing else. He nods at it, like they’re coming to an agreement that it will remind him.  
  
Eduardo tries not to find that funny or adorable. Because it’s neither. Not at all.  
  
Dustin finally arrives, bursting into the room and saying, “Let’s get out of here before Doris realizes I’m the one who broke the photocopier!”  
  
\--  
  
Dustin is not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when Eduardo tells him he’s heading back to Singapore tonight. It’s very clear which end of the spectrum Mark is at, which is what worries him.  
  
“You should stick around longer after the next shareholders’ thing,” Dustin suggests as Eduardo takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of his chair. “Or maybe we’ll all visit you in Singapore.”  
  
The smile that had started to spread across Eduardo’s face freezes. He’s recovered in the space of a blink, but there’s something closed in his expression. “That would be great; we’ll have to see if our schedules coordinate.”  
  
In polite-ese, that’s a _no chance in hell_.  
  
Dustin plays with his napkin, trying not to think of how enthusiastically Eduardo invited Chris over to his place for a home-cooked meal with his new BFF a few weeks back.  
  
He’s very grateful when the waitress appears, smiling and welcoming. She dissipates some of the awkwardness in the air and she’s got great legs.

On the other hand, Dustin has no idea what’s even on the menu, since it’s all in Portuguese. He should have been suspicious the moment Mark said he was choosing the restaurant. Mark, who would eat just about anything (from cold McDonald’s leftovers to beluga caviar with exactly the same level of apathy). Now they’re at a Brazilian restaurant and Eduardo, eternally oblivious, seems to be under the impression that he and Mark have been here before and thus can order for themselves.  
  
He rattles something off in Portuguese, and the waitress smiles wider, prettier, _flirtier_.  
  
“You’re from Brazil.”  
  
Eduardo smiles back. “Yes, São Paulo.”  
  
“_É mesmo_? Me too! Though my family is originally from Osaka.”  
  
“Wow, small world. I visited Osaka a couple of years ago, it’s an amazing city.”  
  
“I only visited once, with my parents, when I was really young. I -”  
  
“I’ll have the _bobó de camarão_,” Mark says abruptly, handing her the menu.  
  
“Good choice, sir,” the waitress says, smile dimming slightly only to brighten again when Eduardo makes an apologetic face at her for Mark’s brusqueness.  
  
“I’ll also have the, um, what he ordered,” Dustin says.  
  
“You know that’s shrimp, right?” Eduardo asks. “In case you’re on one of your kosher stints.”  
  
“No, I did not, and I am not.”  
  
The waitress repeats their orders, and then says something to Eduardo in Portuguese that makes him smile, a little sheepish, a little sad.  
  
“What did she say?” Mark demands before she’s even out of earshot.  
  
“That my – my friends were lucky to have me, to guide them through the menu.”  
  
“Which you didn’t do.”  
  
Eduardo looks at him funny. “Haven’t you been here before?”  
  
“The waitress didn’t do it either, even through that’s _her job_.”  
  
“She was perfectly pleasant.” Eduardo shoots Dustin a _wtf?_ look, and Dustin makes a heroic effort not to roll his eyes and say “dude, come _on_”.  
  
“She’s incompetent,” Mark argues. “But she’s probably aware of how much the suit you’re wearing costs, and we _are_ in Silicon Valley…”  
  
“That’s a pretty misogynistic assumption to make, Mark.”  
  
“Who moves here to be a _waitress_, Eduardo?”  
  
“So you’re being classist instead of sexist?”  
  
“A Harvard graduate can’t accuse someone else of elitism. It’s, like, in the Student Handbook.”  
  
Eduardo snorts. “Am I supposed to believe you ever read that?”  
  
“Why would I ever waste my time reading that? One of the Winklevii used to quote it ad nauseum, though.”  
  
Dustin stiffens, but Eduardo actually laughs.  
  
“It was Cameron, I think.”  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
“They’re individuals, Mark, not carbon copies,” Eduardo reproves, but the corners of his mouth are twitching. “They have their own thoughts and personalities…”  
  
“Or they would, if they had any thoughts of their own or anything vaguely resembling personalities.”  
  
_And…they’re off!_ Dustin notes. It takes him about sixty seconds to start feeling like a third wheel.  
  
A part of him wants to grin at it, because it’s just like old times. The easy back-and-forth, Eduardo intentionally feeding Mark opportunities to verbally eviscerate others, and Mark deliberately playing it up for Eduardo’s amusement.  
  
A part of him wants to stop it, because it’s just like old times _but it isn’t old times_. It only gets Mark’s hopes up that this can go on, and it won’t, Dustin knows. Eduardo is allowing it for now, because he’s apparently settled on appeasement as his method for handling Mark and because he knows he’ll be back in Singapore soon.  
  
Dustin can accept the semi-friendship he has with Eduardo now, even if it’s not what they used to have, is far from ideal. But Mark can’t, won’t ever, wasn’t even satisfied with the attached-at-the-hip best friends thing they had before, no matter how hard he tried to be.  
  
And look how well that turned out.  
  
This is just creating false hope, and it would infuriate Dustin if he didn’t know Eduardo isn’t doing it on purpose, isn’t even aware of his effect on Mark.  
  
(Dustin hadn’t been sure of that, before.)

The waitress returns with their drinks, smiling at Eduardo, who thanks her but immediately returns to insisting that Mark is wrong, nutritionists are _not_ “glorified gym addicts with a tentative grasp on biochemistry and no grasp at all on the importance of clinical trials” and that Mark of all people would benefit from hiring one.  
  
They’ve moved onto debating the _Inception_ ending when the waitress returns with the food. She sets Eduardo’s dish down last and with an extra flourish, smiling widely when Eduardo thanks her, because the poor dear has no idea how close she is to having her Facebook profile hacked.  
  
“Oh, my pleasure. It’s so great to talk to someone from back home.”  
  
Eduardo smiles at her. “How long have you lived in the States?”  
  
“Almost four years now, to go to Stanford.”  
  
“_Fala sério_! Your English is perfect!”  
  
“Thank you.” She tosses her sleek dark hair over her shoulder. “So is yours.”  
  
“I was really young when we left Brazil, though. You must miss it.”  
  
“_Que saudade_, yeah.”  
  
Something shifts in Eduardo’s expression at her words, fleeting and painful like a paper cut, and Mark takes advantage of the gap.  
  
“We didn’t actually come here to listen to your life story. Shocking, I know. Try Oprah. Oh, what am I saying, she actually has standards. One of those lurid daytime programs might be able to fit you in between paternity test results and people who want to marry their pets.”  
  
The waitress looks too astonished to be offended and Eduardo looks like he’s torn between horror and guilty amusement and Dustin takes the only option. He laughs, like Mark was a comedian instead of an ass.  
  
The waitress quickly joins in, probably faking. She nods her head in Mark’s direction and says something to Eduardo in Portuguese that finally makes him laugh too, instead of glaring at Mark.  
  
Still trying to set the waitress on fire with his gaze, Mark says fiercely, “I _wasn’t_ j-”  
  
Dustin aims at kick at him under the table and hits Eduardo instead, making him curse and Mark break off and re-direct his glare.  
  
“Oops,” Dustin says innocently, and then to the waitress, “Don’t worry. His Royal Bitchiness won’t be the one determining your tip.”  
  
She smiles uncertainly. “Um. Well, enjoy your meals.”  
  
“Thank you,” Eduardo says as she leaves.  
  
“You’re not supposed to mention money like that, Dustin,” Mark says. “It’s impolite.”  
  
Dustin looks at Mark. Then he looks at Eduardo. Then they both look at Mark and burst out laughing.  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” Mark says without bite. “I can be polite. Sometimes. Kind of.”  
  
“Like when?” Eduardo asks between chuckles. “When Chris is threatening to wash out your mouth with soap?”  
  
“Or my mom,” Mark says.  
  
Eduardo laughs again, and Dustin watches Mark watch him.  
  
It would be almost sweet, if it weren’t so sad.  
  
Eduardo stops laughing, but he’s still outright grinning at Mark. “You wanna know what she said about you?” He starts eating, missing the way Mark’s expression closes, tightens, at the mention of the waitress. “That you’re as sweet as a dessert made of _jiló_ – it’s this really bitter fruit that’s usually cooked like a vegetable.”  
  
“What a smart thing to say about a customer,” Mark says, voice perfectly dry, but he’s stabbing at his food more than he’s eating it.  
  
“Still, it’s got to be the first time anyone’s associated the word ‘sweet’ with Mark,” Dustin says, drawing another laugh from Eduardo and a violent skewering of a shrimp from Mark.  
  
_Sorry, little buddy,_ Dustin mentally salutes the shrimp. And then stares at the one on his own fork. “Hey, was that ‘Under the Sea’ guy a shrimp?” he asks, a bit panicked. “You know, from _The Little Mermaid_?”  
  
“You remember that movie?” Mark asks in revulsion.  
  
“It gave me nightmares, okay! The kitchen with Sebastian’s buddies roasting alive, the people turned into polyps…”  
  
“He was a crab,” Eduardo says. “And I always thought _Pinocchio_ was the childhood-ruiner of Disney films, personally.”  
  
“The donkeys,” Mark says knowingly.  
  
Eduardo shudders. “The donkeys.”  
  
Dustin points at Mark with his fork and mimics his oh-so-superior tone. “You remember that movie?”  
  
“Only because you forced me to watch it.”

“You really did force us all to watch horrible movies way too often,” says Eduardo. “I think it may have permanently scarred me. That or Christy’s pyromania.”  
  
“Christy?” Mark asks sharply.  
  
Dustin inches his chair away from Mark’s and out of stabbing range of his fork.  
  
Eduardo rolls his eyes. “She called me a while ago; God knows how she even got the number. If I hadn’t already decided to change it, that message would have settled it.” He sips his drink. “Suzana won’t even tell me how many messages I had when she checked them for me. Said it would make me faint.”  
  
“Your assistant doesn’t check your messages?” Mark asks, voice and face completely devoid of expression.  
  
_Shit,_ Dustin thinks. Which is no longer the s-word in his vocabulary; that’s clearly ‘Suzana’ now.  
  
“Not my _personal_ ones,” Eduardo says, like it’s obvious, like he’d never let his assistant from work touch something personal if he could help it, like he takes it as a given that one should never mix business with –  
  
_Double shit,_ Dustin thinks.  
  
And suddenly he wonders if Eduardo’s obliviousness isn’t him not seeing what’s right in front of him, but him _not wanting_ to see it, not trusting his own sight.  
  
_Triple shit._  
  
“So your…your friend checks them for you,” Mark says, still sounding like a Borg drone.  
  
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Suzy is all but living at my place anyway; the woman keeps no food in her home and I have to send her reminders to water my plants or she won’t even notice when they’ve died.”  
  
“You keep plants?” Dustin asks. “What are you, an eighty-year-old woman?”  
  
Fortunately, his attempt to change the subject and lower Mark’s blood pressure is successful. Unfortunately, this leaves them talking about _plants_ for a horrifying amount of time. Mark rambles about Brazil’s biodiversity and gets Eduardo talking about his support of the conservation cause.  
  
And soon the waitress is leaving the bill next to Eduardo with a flirty smile, but Dustin grabs it first, only to open it and say “oh”.  
  
The waitress left her phone number.  
  
Before Dustin can react, Eduardo’s taking it back, saying, “Dustin, please, we’ll split it three ways and Mark _will_ leave a tip -” He sets it down open and both he and Mark stare at the pink scrawl.  
  
Eduardo turns spectacularly red.  
  
This is interesting in a few ways. One, Dustin wouldn’t have thought Eduardo could turn that red, with his tan (sadly, it’s still nowhere near as red as Dustin can turn after, like, thirty seconds in the sun). Two, when something like this used to happen at Harvard, Eduardo would grin, not blush. Three, he’s avoiding looking at Mark, so evidently he can only ignore some things for so long.  
  
“How professional,” Mark says flatly. “Now, I’m not saying she’s a gold-digger…oh, wait. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”  
  
Eduardo is clearly torn between wanting to defend the waitress, to tell Mark off, to change the subject, to be swallowed whole by the floor, and to question why Mark can quote Kanye. And probably a dozen other contradictory emotions; it is _Wardo_, after all.  
  
“You live in Singapore anyway, man, it’s not like you could really take her out,” Dustin says. Reasonably, he thinks, but the look Eduardo gives him makes him recoil. It’s furious and embarrassed and _knowing_.  
  
“Maybe I’ll fly her over for a date,” he bites out. He throws his serviette on the table and stalks off to find the waitress before Dustin can splutter a response.  
  
Something like “save me!”, because Mark looks _murderous_.

“Hey, I was trying to help you!”  
  
“Stop trying,” Mark says, and there’s an implicit, unmistakable threat there: _or else I’ll put you in charge of expanding to Antarctica_.  
  
Maybe that should shut Dustin up. He’s not intimidated by Mark at all, but he’s also aware that on the rare occasions that he loses it, Mark’s temper is bad and it is _vindictive_. Still, unless Eduardo ends up marrying the waitress, Mark isn’t that angry. And Dustin tries to be a better friend these days than he used to be.  
  
“Mark, if you really want to pursue this,” he says seriously, “this is not the way to go about it.”  
  
“Should I ever be desperate enough to want advice from _you_, I’ll ask. Right after I sell to Microsoft and decide to pursue a PhD in art history.”  
  
Dustin ignores him. “You’re just going to piss him off even more. And I know you think that’s better than all that politeness, like you barely even know each other, but you’re just digging your own grave with it.”  
  
“Dustin -”  
  
“Whatever message you think you’re sending, Wardo’s not getting it.”  
  
“This is _none_ of your -”  
  
“- so just come out and _say it_, Mark, goddamn it, that was half the problem in the first place!”  
  
Mark opens his mouth, presumably to slice Dustin’s ego to ribbons, but Eduardo returns.  
  
“Are we ready to head out?” he asks cheerfully, slipping his suit jacket back on.  
  
Sometimes Dustin genuinely worries that Eduardo is bipolar.  
  
“Yeah,” Mark says, standing up, and the two of them just head right out, leaving Dustin scrambling to pay so that Mark doesn’t just leave him here, because he _so_ would.  
  
“…a really nice place, so thanks,” Eduardo is saying when Dustin catches up, panting.  
  
Mark shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like it’s a pure coincidence they went to an authentic Brazilian restaurant.  
  
Which is typical Mark, but also probably means that Eduardo’s been getting his polite on _hard_.  
  
So, not such a mood swing from angry to blithe, then. Eduardo just decided he was going to play nice, and when Eduardo makes a decision, he can be as stubborn as Mark.  
  
Regardless, the car ride is tense. Not that there hasn’t been tension between Mark and Eduardo since, like, _the beginning of time_, but it seems to be getting increasingly pronounced. From ‘huh, there’s a bit of tension in the CO2 these two breathe out’ to ‘holy shit, I’m going to suffocate on UST’.  
  
It would make an interesting epitaph, Dustin muses idly (he’s not being flippant, he has a bet with Sean, okay?), but frankly, if Dustin is going to die by kinky asphyxiation, he’d rather the sex parts involve him and several supermodels, not his desperately-in-need-of-couples-therapy friends.  
  
It settles him on being a little guiltily relieved that Eduardo is heading back to Singapore. He and Mark need some space and some time. Maybe when Wardo comes back for the next shareholders’ meeting, things will have calmed down and maybe…Dustin doesn’t want to get his hopes up yet, but – maybe. Anything more at the moment would be too much, too risky, Dustin thinks.  
  
This, naturally, is when they drop Eduardo off at his hotel and Mark says, “See you at seven.”  
  
\--  
_A/N:_ Apologies for any Brazilian Portuguese I mangled!  
  
_É mesmo?_ = “Really?”  
_Fala sério_ = literally “talk seriously”; colloquially “you’re kidding” or “no way!”  
  
The word _saudade_ has no direct translation, but it’s a kind of hopeless, nostalgic longing or heartache. In the context I used it, the waitress was saying she missed Brazil.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N:_As always, thanks so much to everyone who is reading! :)  
\--  
  
Eduardo calls the hotel concierge and has them arrange for a driver to pick him up at 7:30. Mark will be late, if he remembers to come at all, and Eduardo is betting he won’t. Mark will get caught up in coding or some other aspect of Facebook and it will slip his mind entirely.  
  
Naturally, he’s shocked to hear a knock at the door at 7:00 sharp. He looks into the peephole and is astonished to see Mark, instead of…anyone else, really.  
  
“You’re here,” Eduardo says when he opens the door.  
  
“You’re observant.”  
  
“I think I’m allowed to state the obvious when the obvious is extremely bizarre. You’re on time too. Like…exactly on time. Like you got here early and stood in the hallway staring at your watch until it was precisely seven.”  
  
Mark shrugs, and Eduardo wonders if the lighting in the hallway is a bit off, because he looks slightly pink. “You said seven.”  
  
“I know what I said; I gave you extra time. I didn’t expect you to be punctual for something unimportant.”  
  
“Making your flight is kind of important.”  
  
“Yeah, to _me_,” Eduardo says, and then, “Come in, I guess. I was just finishing packing.”  
  
“I gathered.” Mark glances at the bed, where Eduardo’s suitcase and several piles of folded clothes are seated.  
  
Including his underwear. Of course. At least he already packed the condoms.  
  
…and now he’s thinking about sex while he’s alone with Mark in a hotel room. Wonderful.  
  
Eduardo turns away to finish packing, which allows him to avoid looking at Mark and pretend he isn’t.  
  
Mark doesn’t say anything or sit down. He just sort of hovers, hands shoved in his hoodie.  
  
_Say something._ Eduardo packs his underwear under the toiletries. _You have to say something, this is just becoming awkward. More awkward._ He folds an Armani jacket and fits it in. _Break the silence, it’s not like Mark will!  
  
…oh God, this is going on forever.  
  
Say something! Anything!_  
  
“So, um, how long is your flight?” Mark asks.  
  
Eduardo is so relieved that he isn’t too suspicious about why Mark would voluntarily break an uncomfortable silence. “About twenty and a half hours, with a stop-over in Tokyo.”  
  
“And you’ll lose, what, fifteen hours on top of that with the time difference?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“How soon are you planning to come back?”  
  
“I don’t know. It might not even be necessary, really. We’ve said our piece and the media frenzy is dying down, so I might be able to stay home until the next shareholders’ meeting.”  
  
“That’s two and a half months away.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“But that guy. In New York. The lawyer. The story about you two -”  
  
“Isn’t really a big story anymore. Besides, Tony doesn’t care, so I don’t see why I should stress about it anymore.”  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Eduardo sees Mark playing with a string of his hoodie. “Neither of you are concerned about it at all then?”  
  
“I denied it and I think the damage has already been done.” Eduardo packs the last silk tie.  
  
“Is it true?”  
  
Eduardo is finished packing now, and out of excuses not to look at Mark. He suspects the timing isn’t coincidental.  
  
“Tony’s straight,” he says eventually, zipping the suitcase up.  
  
“So are you,” Mark points out, and Eduardo goes hot and cold at once, thinking about exceptions to personal rules and a hot, wet mouth.  
  
“Yeah,” he says inanely, staring at the top of his suitcase. “But Tony was never – he’s never been…curious.”  
  
Mark lets out a small sigh: exasperation, maybe, or relief. “Not out to punish anyone, either,” he says under his breath.  
  
“Excuse me?” Eduardo finally looks straight at Mark, who shrugs.  
  
“You ready to go?”  
  
“It wasn’t about that.”  
  
Mark doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Then what was it about?”  
  
Eduardo opens his mouth, but he can’t think of a word to say. He _had_ been angry. Livid, in fact. And he _had_ wanted to taunt Mark, to hurt him, to _win_. He had been cruel, deliberately.  
  
He wonders abruptly if that’s how Mark felt, after he froze the account.  
  
But no, he couldn’t have. Mark’s never been the powerless one, and he’s never cared enough about Eduardo to be capable of getting that furious over anything he did, and it’s not the same at all.

“Exactly,” Mark says, but the smugness from being right is missing from his voice. “You wanted to get some revenge before you could allow yourself to consider being friends again, I get it -”  
  
Eduardo laughs, even though it isn’t funny at all, even though it makes his throat tighten. How else can he react to something so absurd? “I – I don’t want to be friends again.”  
  
The expression that flits across Mark’s features is a muted version of how most people would look if they’d been punched in the stomach. “But – but you…_oh_. You were only being friendly so I wouldn’t -”  
  
“Pick another fight or start a conversation as uncomfortable as this one? Bingo.”  
  
Eduardo _is_ uncomfortable. For the obvious reasons, but also because of Mark’s face. The complete lack of expression there, like it’s more than his usual stoicism, like it’s deliberate. It makes something twist in Eduardo’s chest, something like sadness and shame. He remembers, in a way that’s more visceral than conscious, that he used to think Mark only went this blank as a defense mechanism. When he was feeling so much that he refused to let any of it show, terrified of revealing vulnerability.  
  
Then they went through the depositions. Eduardo doesn’t think that anymore.  
  
“So you just wanted to punish me, and that’s it,” Mark says, voice about as animated as an automated bank phone line. “You wanted to – to shove it in my face that I can never have what I want, as if I didn’t know that already -”  
  
“Mark -”  
  
“- as if I haven’t known it for years. You wanted me to feel as pathetic as you must have felt. Fine. Glad we cleared that up. Let’s go.” Mark reaches for his suitcase, but Eduardo intercepts, grabbing his wrist.  
  
They both stare.  
  
(They both remember the last time Eduardo touched Mark.)  
  
“I -” His voice comes out hoarse and he coughs, resumes, “I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to, um, plot revenge or something. I shouldn’t have – I didn’t think you would – I just…” He exhales loudly, shutting his eyes. He can feel Mark’s pulse fast against his fingertips. “You make me _so angry_ sometimes, Mark.”  
  
“I know,” Mark says after a moment, and some old instinct tells Eduardo that Mark understands even the parts he didn’t – couldn’t – put into words.  
  
He releases Mark’s wrist, but Mark turns the tables, grabs Eduardo’s wrist before he can drop his arm and step away.  
  
“I know,” he repeats, emphatic. His fingers feel hot on Eduardo’s skin, look pale against his tan.  
  
He wonders how they’d feel on his mouth, his stomach, his cock. How they’d look. How they’d taste.  
  
Eduardo looks sideways, meets Mark’s gaze.  
  
“I _know_, Wardo,” he says again, and Eduardo understands what he means.  
  
Or he thinks he does.  
  
And then he second-guesses himself. Because Mark couldn’t possibly mean that Eduardo had made him as irrationally livid as Mark made him (_Mark, who almost never raised his voice, who hated any perceived loss of control, _screaming_ at him over the phone_), because that would imply that Eduardo had some degree of power over Mark that he never did (_except for “I need you” and Mark on his knees_), because that would necessitate that Mark gave a damn about him and he doesn’t and he never has (_“Mark was in love with you then and he’s in love with you now”_).  
  
Eduardo does something that he’s refused to do for years. He tries to read Mark. Deliberately, he studies – the way Mark’s eyes have gone dark, pupils wide with what might be arousal or anxiety or hope. He scrutinizes the body language, the way Mark’s entire body is turned towards him, the way he’s entered Eduardo’s personal space. He feels the fingers grasping his wrist from a man who seldom permits touches, let alone initiates them.

That grasp tightens reflexively as Mark glances down and then back up. “You’re hard,” he murmurs, and Eduardo hears (lets himself hear) the surprise and excitement and nervousness there.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo warns (pleads), shaking his head, because they can’t – they shouldn’t – this isn’t –  
  
“I’d do it again,” Mark says, unabashed, matter-of-fact. “I told you before, I’m not ashamed, and I don’t do things I don’t want to do, so you shouldn’t – I’d do it again.”  
  
_We shouldn’t have done it in the first place_, is what Eduardo should say. Or _I wouldn’t_, if he was trying to be an asshole and also not terribly accurate. Or, really, he should say just about anything aside from what he does say.  
  
“I didn’t ask out that waitress,” he says in a rush. “I – I was just – Dustin was taking your side and being so fucking obvious about it that I kind of, almost…but I don’t want to keep being angry, Mark.”  
  
Mark shrugs with one shoulder, but keeps the other arm still, his grip on Eduardo strong and steady. “It’s fine, if you’re still angry with me. I can take it.”  
  
Eduardo shivers, hot and cold, angry and aroused. Because, on the one hand, Mark giving him _permission_ to be pissed off at him is seriously fucked up. And he hardly needs the reminder that Mark has always been far better at handling the worst Eduardo could throw at him than vice versa. On the other hand, it’s certainly a step up from the Mark who acted like Eduardo was overreacting or like it was just business or like Eduardo got what he deserved. And it’s…different, to have someone who isn’t calling his anger childish (his father, even when Eduardo actually was a child) or scary (Sean, even years after the punch that was never thrown) or a symptom of some kind of psychological problem (Chris, though he means well). Someone who isn’t his therapist.  
  
But.  
  
If they do this, if this happens again, what little capability Eduardo has to ignore it will crumble. Once can be written off as a mistake, a fluke, an impulsive one-off best forgotten. _Twice_ is (the potential for a pattern, proof that it means something) different.  
  
So why isn’t Eduardo saying no, stepping away, suggesting they leave for the airport?  
  
Mark is frowning at him, but he licks his lips and Eduardo twitches full-body, feline, at the sight. “Sit on the bed,” Mark says and he almost sounds clinical, dispassionate, like he’s stating the time.  
  
Almost, but not quite, and it’s that more than anything else that makes Eduardo gently tug his wrist out of Mark’s grip. He’s watching, and that’s why he sees a flicker in Mark’s expression, lightning-fast, and why he notices Mark hold his breath. He’s watching when the expression changes, relaxes, as he backs up to gingerly sit on the edge of the bed.  
  
Barely audible, Mark releases his breath and strides over. For a moment, Eduardo is at the perfect level to see how much this is affecting Mark too, and then Mark is kneeling in front of him and Eduardo thinks of the last time this happened –  
  
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He can’t help the question from spilling out of his mouth.  
  
Mark gives him a look he once reserved for philosophy majors. “Yes,” he states, like he’s confirming that water is, in fact, wet. But then uncertainty and something like fear (_but that can’t be right_) crosses his face. “Are – are you?”  
  
The answer is somewhere between _hell yes_ and _fuck no_, or both, or neither. Eduardo can’t answer in a way that isn’t at least a little untrue, so he ends up opening and closing his mouth like an idiot, lost for words.  
  
Mark bites his bottom lip and looks to the left of Eduardo’s shoulder. “I, um, won’t have to rush it this time.”  
  
“…okay?” Eduardo says, because he has no idea how to respond to that, or to Mark’s tone, which he doesn’t think he’s ever heard before and can’t name.  
  
(Except maybe he has heard it once before, drenched and drained and distraught in a dimly-lit hallway.)  
  
Mark evidently takes this as a reply to his earlier question because he’s undoing Eduardo pants and saying, “Don’t close your eyes.”

And it seems that Mark meant it when he said he wasn’t going to rush, because he blows Eduardo excruciatingly slowly. He sucks and laps and licks and generally attempts to drive Eduardo insane. And he _stops_ every time Eduardo shuts his eyes while he groans or starts to tip backwards onto the bed.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo whines the _fifth_ time this happens, trying not to arch his hips off the bed, “come on, _Mark_ -”  
  
“Keep your eyes on me and I won’t stop,” Mark says, his own eyes focused on Eduardo’s cock, wet from pre-come and Mark’s saliva. “Just don’t close your eyes and – just look at _me_, I need to know that you -” He breaks off to bend a little lower while pushing one of Eduardo’s legs up and mouths at his balls.  
  
“Oh _fuck_, Mark, your _mouth_-!”  
  
Eduardo pants and curses and focuses so hard on keeping still that he can’t help but let his eyes drift half-shut.  
  
Mark pulls away to give him a look. It’s not angry or even annoyed, it’s – it’s hungry and resigned all at once, the look of someone who wants something he thinks can’t have.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo says softly, touching the curls at the nape of his neck, just barely, “please.”  
  
Mark takes a quick, sharp breath and then closes his mouth over him again. Neither of them looks away. They keep their gazes locked even as Eduardo can’t keep from twitching up off the bed and panting out desperately, twisting his fingers in the blankets. Mark’s eyes are a shade of blue that is somehow both darker and brighter than usual, all shadows and starlight, hazy-hot arousal and razor-sharp focus. All of his attention is on Eduardo right now, that single-minded intensity that is both unsettling and exhilarating, and Eduardo couldn’t look away if he tried.  
  
(He never could; never realized until it was too late how the very attention he yearned for could pin him and flay him as well as uplift him and electrify him; never both feared and craved being consumed by it like he does now.)  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo gasps, still staring into Mark’s eyes like they’re gravity and he’s being held in orbit. “I’m going to – I’m going to -”  
  
Mark sucks him harder, deeper, and Eduardo comes with a cry.  
  
When he regains a semblance of coherence, Eduardo finds himself lying flat on his back. He pushes himself up on his elbows to see Mark still watching him. Still hard.  
  
Eduardo breathes out and reaches forward in one movement, grabbing a handful of Mark’s hoodie and yanking him onto the bed. Mark looks startled and stumbles on top of him, all awkward skinny limbs and sudden vulnerability, and Eduardo can’t his hands down his pants quick enough.  
  
“_Fuck_,” Mark growls into his ear when Eduardo gets his hand on his cock, going frozen and wide-eyed.  
  
The angle is awkward and it’s been years since Eduardo has touched any dick but his own, so it’s with a clumsy eagerness that he wraps his fingers around Mark and makes him shudder and groan.  
  
Mark thrusts into his grip, pitching forward to pant against his neck, “Wardo – fuck – I’m not going to – Wardo – I -”  
  
His tongue flicks out against the hollow between Eduardo’s jaw and neck, and Eduardo shivers and speeds up. It’s too dry, even with Mark’s pre-come, but Mark isn’t complaining, just jerking his hips faster and faster.  
  
Eduardo trails his free hand up Mark’s side, over his ass. Pauses. Gives an experimental squeeze.  
  
Mark makes a choking sound into the notch between Eduardo’s collarbones, his cock twitching in Eduardo’s hand.  
  
Eduardo slides his other hand up higher, under the fabric of Mark’s hoodie, brushing his fingers lightly against the small of Mark’s back, the bumps of his spine. He wishes, suddenly and fervently, that he was still staring at Mark – that he could yank off his clothes and look at him, his skin flushing from pale to pink with arousal, his cock dripping in Eduardo’s hand, his mouth still wet and swollen –  
  
“Wardo, I…I…_Eduardo_, I -”  
  
And then Mark’s coming all over Eduardo’s hand and biting at his throat and Eduardo’s cock twitches, not capable of getting hard again yet but making a heroic effort at it.

Mark seems to be having difficulty deciding whether he wants to get his breath back or to lick and nip at Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo pulls his hand out from where it’s pinned between them, not sure where to wipe it off (there are some things that are just too rude to leave for housekeeping to clean up), but Mark catches his wrist again.  
  
He sits up, straddling Eduardo. Their gazes locked once more, Mark brings Eduardo’s hand to his mouth and starts licking his fingers clean.  
  
Eduardo’s heart is hammering so loudly that he’s sure Mark must hear it, must know how it’s affecting him to watch Mark’s reddened, swollen lips wrap around his fingers, to see his tongue flick out against his palm and knuckles. Licking like he can’t get enough of the taste of his come on Eduardo’s skin, like he’s fantasized about it before, coming on Eduardo or maybe sucking on his fingers before Eduardo slides them inside him, gets him ready –  
  
Taking a deep, shaky breath, Eduardo looks up from Mark’s mouth, into his eyes. It’s like looking directly at the sun - brilliant but it burns.  
  
(He wonders what Mark sees, when he looks into Eduardo’s eyes.)  
  
Mark takes a final swipe at a fingertip, but he doesn’t release Eduardo’s wrist and Eduardo doesn’t pull away. He swallows audibly. “Wardo -”  
  
The phone rings, and they both jump at the shrill noise, the sudden reminder that there is a world outside of the two of them.  
  
Eduardo stretches his free hand out – a bit of a strain, considering that Mark is basically sitting on top of him and shows no intentions of moving – and picks up. “Hello?”  
  
“Mr. Saverin, the driver that you requested bring you to the airport is here.”  
  
“Oh,” Eduardo says.  
  
Right. He has a flight to catch, a career to protect, a life to get back to. It is disturbingly easy to forget this when he spends too much time in Mark’s company.  
  
“Did you want to reschedule, sir?”  
  
“Um, no. No. I’ll be down in a few minutes; please give my apologies to the driver for the delay. Thank you.”  
  
“You called a car service,” Mark observes when Eduardo’s hung up. He sounds impassive, but he abruptly stands up, almost tripping as he backs away from the bed.  
  
Eduardo feels cold in all the places Mark was touching him before that he isn’t now. “I…I didn’t think you’d show up.”  
  
“You didn’t think I would, or you didn’t want me to?”  
  
“I…I don’t…”  
  
“I should go.”  
  
“Mark, no, that’s not what -”  
  
“It would be rude to make the driver wait any longer,” Mark says flatly. “And you certainly can’t have that, can’t ever not be _nice_.”  
  
“_Mark_ -”  
  
But Mark ignores him, leaving before Eduardo can even struggle to stand and pull his pants back up.  
  
\--  
  
In a washroom at the airport, Eduardo washes his hands and flushes at the realization that it took him this long to do so, that he’s been walking around for over an hour with traces of Mark’s come and saliva on him.  
  
He has enough self-control not to stare down at his fingers and remember what it looked like when Mark was curling his tongue around them. But he shivers when he dries his hands, pressing paper in places Mark’s mouth has been.  
  
Eduardo glares at himself in the mirror. Under the horrible fluorescent lighting, the hickie on his neck stands out, red-purple against tan skin and only partially covered by the crisp white line of his collar. People are going to see that. Some of them might recognize him from the recent media craze, might attribute it to Mark.  
  
Swallowing hard, Eduardo reaches up to brush a fingertip over the mark. He can feel his own pulse there, like he could feel Mark’s heartbeat when he held his wrist, a staccato rhythm like Mark’s hips pressing into his before he came. He thinks about sucking a matching bruise onto Mark’s throat, how much better it would look on his pale skin, how much more obvious it would be with Mark’s collarless t-shirts and hoodies. How often he’s going to think about it during the long flight over the Pacific and fight getting hard.  
  
“What are you doing?” Eduardo murmurs to his reflection. “What the hell are you _doing_?”


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N:_ I’m sorry for the delay with this part! I got two killer migraines back to back and was out for the count for days.  
  
You guys continue to blow me away with your responses to this fic. I know I’m torturing you here, but things are actually improving – in baby steps, and sometimes missteps, and sometimes one step forward, two steps back. But steps are being taken, nevertheless.  
  
Thanks so much for reading! <3  
\--  
  
It’s raining when Eduardo arrives in Singapore.  
  
He enters his apartment, looks at the familiar marble, dark woods and glass, the understated art and sparing photographs on the walls. He looks at the couch he and Suzana have camped out on countless times to watch movies, the kitchen he’s been burning gourmet meals in, the desk he picked up at a market outside Jakarta and has spent countless hours working at. It feels like home, but not like he’s missed it.  
  
Eduardo wonders abruptly if he _would_ feel that pang upon seeing Kirkland again, with its couch of the questionable stains, assorted beer bottles and absurd amount of electronics. He thinks he would.  
  
Which is ridiculous, considering he didn’t live there, ever, and that his memories of it are so tied up with Mark that they should be tainted by association with what came after.  
  
Eduardo leaves his luggage in the hallway and crashes in his bed fully dressed. He takes a petulant sort of vindication in the fact that his bed feels ten times better than the hotel’s, and a hundred times better than the lumpy, narrow bed in Kirkland. Mark’s bed. Which Eduardo slept in nearly as often as Mark did and which, in light of recent revelations, seems a little…not entirely…  
  
It’s significant somehow, but Eduardo is too tired to pick it apart. He dozes off quickly.  
  
He dreams, bizarrely, of bathroom stalls.  
  
\--  
  
When Eduardo wakes up, he stumbles into his bathroom, not feeling fully awake until he’s been standing under the shower for several minutes and almost inhales a lungful of water while yawning.  
  
He washes his hair first, trying to ignore morning wood, because seriously – he’s not a teenager anymore and he still feels like he’s in another time zone and therefore it doesn’t qualify as morning. And maybe also because he knows what (who) he would end up thinking about while attending to it.  
  
Ultimately, though, Eduardo is too tired and too worried about his upcoming meeting to resist for long. He slides a wet hand over himself and tries not to compare it unfavourably to Mark’s mouth. He scrapes his free hand over his chest, his nipples, and tries not to wonder how it would feel if it was Mark’s hand instead, Mark’s slender, nimble fingers on him. He starts to pump and gives up on trying not to imagine Mark in here with him.  
  
With the light switch left off and the muted glow of the waking city spilling in through the windows, Mark’s curls would look softer than usual, turned golden by the low light. His eyelashes would be paler and his eyes darker, sunlight on the sea. His skin would be mother-of-pearl pale everywhere except where Eduardo’s mouth and fingers would leave their mark.  
  
The ease and accuracy with which Eduardo can picture this is alarming. He does it anyway.  
  
And yet, Eduardo has trouble maintaining the fantasy because he has trouble imagining any scenario in which Mark would be in Singapore. Mark and Singapore just…don’t go together. Eduardo tries to imagine Mark strolling around Orchard Road, crossing the Helix Bridge, or even just sitting on Eduardo’s bed with his laptop. The mental picture is jarring, like clashing colours.  
  
When Eduardo comes, it’s physically pleasant but strangely unsatisfying, as if he isn’t fully sated. It’s odd, because Eduardo has found masturbation more a relief than a pleasure before, but this isn’t like that, this feels backward.  
  
A lot of this feels backward.

\--

Eduardo is not fired.  
  
“You’ve been hearing the talk of expansion for months, I’m sure,” the CEO says as Eduardo tries not to collapse in relief. “We’re going to North America and South America and we want you to be the regional VP in one of those areas. That was always the plan, but recent…developments have made it ideal in further ways.”  
  
In other words, they want to get Eduardo the hell out of Singapore to put an end to the publicity shit storm he’s been causing them. But he’s a valuable employee with a golden parachute that would make losing him costly to the company, not to mention that they’ve definitely done a thorough background check on him. The only thing worse than getting publicity over having a non-straight (maybe?) executive would be getting publicity over firing said non-straight (probably) executive who is also incidentally a billionaire with a team of elite lawyers and a litigious past.  
  
This promotion kills two birds with one stone. But that’s all unofficial, implied; the version Eduardo will get from HR and in his new contract will be very different.  
  
“Which area did you have planned for me?” Eduardo asks.  
  
“The initial thought was to send you to North America. It’s a larger, more stable market and we’ll be opening two offices there from the get-go. We’re projecting a third within two years. But, of course, South America would work as well; we already know the office will be in Brazil and there is a great deal of potential there. What do you think?”  
  
Eduardo has to choose between moving back to Brazil or moving back to the States.  
  
_I’m between Scylla and Charybdis right now,_ he texts Suzana after the meeting.  
  
_Wow, pretentious comparison much? Your Harvard is showing._  
  
Eduardo could make a crack about jealousy and college rivalries, but he’s too busy trying not to panic. The CEO gave him a week to think about it. A week to figure out exactly how he wants to change his life completely _yet again_.  
  
_You’ve been expecting a promotion like this for a while,_ Suzana reminds him.  
  
_There’s a difference between expecting some vague future event and it actually HAPPENING.  
  
Don’t all-caps at me, Eduardo. Also, it’ll be months before you actually move and didn’t you tell me Singapore was always meant to be temporary anyway?_  
  
She’s right, on both counts. Eduardo will have months to transition to…wherever he ends up moving…and when he originally moved to Singapore, it _was_ with the intention of moving back to the U.S. eventually.  
  
_This has more to do with other crazy changes in your life than it does with work._  
  
She’s right again, damn her.  
  
One of the two North American offices is almost guaranteed to end up in California. Most likely in San Francisco or San Jose.  
  
And not too long ago, that wouldn’t have bothered Eduardo. Much.  
  
Now, it’s all too mixed up with Mark, and Eduardo didn’t think things could get any more complicated on that front but they have. Now, Eduardo has even less of a chance of making a career decision, a business decision, impartially. Now, he should be creating lists of pros and cons, reading up on the American, Brazilian and international high-tech and biotech industries, cross-referencing with data about patent grants in the last five years and economic forecasts for the next five years, checking out the competition in both countries.  
  
Instead, he’s going to see his therapist.  
  
It’s been a while since Eduardo has been to see Dr. Wu. It’s been a while since he felt he needed to.  
  
But he’s better at recognizing the symptoms of potentially unhealthy behaviour than he used to be. Before, he shrugged off all of Chris’s concern as excessive and borne from guilt over his continued friendships with Mark and Dustin. Before, he rolled his eyes when Chris said his drinking habits were troubling and scoffed at the suggestion that having a lot of casual sex was in any way self-destructive. Before, he believed that because he didn’t mope or cry or cut himself, he couldn’t possibly be depressed.  
  
(Before, he thought about his father learning he’d seen a shrink, and quailed.)  
  
“Please take a seat, Mr. Saverin,” says the receptionist. “Dr. Wu will be with you momentarily.”  
  
“Thank you.”

It took a while for Eduardo to settle on Dr. Wu as well. At first, he avoided psychiatrists altogether, not interested in getting prescribed anything. He went for therapists who were more informal, who didn’t decorate their walls with their degrees. He hated it.  
  
Eduardo already felt weird and uncomfortable talking about all these things he never talked about (except to one person, which hadn’t exactly turned out well, but there were plenty of things he hadn’t even told Mark). He found he liked the professional distance Dr. Wu maintained – there was no need to try to be charming, no pretense of friendship to make him feel guilty that they only talked about him, no pressure and no expectations.  
  
Dr. Wu is still a rock, weathering every storm Eduardo’s emotions throw at her. She listens, attentive and interested but impartial, as Eduardo rambles and rants through recent events, occasionally making a note.  
  
When he finishes, half-expecting to be put back on his old prescription, she instead asks simply, “How did you feel when you found out how Mark feels about you?”  
  
Eduardo’s impulse, as always, is to think it should be obvious; he might as well communicate his feelings in big, neon, flashing lights. But he knows this part is not for Dr. Wu’s sake, it’s for his. Identifying an emotion and acknowledging it, evaluating its source, trying to cope with it in a healthy manner.  
  
“I was…well, I guess I didn’t believe the story at first. And then, I – I tried to ignore it and how it made me feel. I was surprised and…upset.”  
  
“Upset in what way?”  
  
“Angry.”  
  
“Why do you think you feel anger, Eduardo?”  
  
He takes a deep breath and thinks about it. Really thinks about it.  
  
“Because…because I always wanted some kind of sign from Mark that he’d cared about me or, failing that, an explanation. A reason. And now…” He swallows. “Now I have one, or the closest to one Mark will ever give me, and…it’s awful. It doesn’t even explain much, or maybe it would if Mark, you know, _actually explained things_, but – but as it is, my life’s been thrown into upheaval _again_ and my career put at risk _again_ and it’s all because Mark is an asshole who doesn’t think or care about how things affect people who aren’t him. Again.  
  
“And I just…I guess it – it _hurts_, to know that Mark didn’t care about me but was attracted to me because it’s yet another thing I missed and because I cared _so much_, I… I really thought I was past being able to be hurt by Mark too, and to find out that I’m not, well…”  
  
That’s not even everything, Eduardo thinks, but it’s either enough for Dr. Wu or she’s aware of what else there is but not addressing it yet.  
  
“How do you feel about your anger?” she asks.  
  
In their earliest sessions, Eduardo often replied sarcastically to such questions. Since then, he’s learned that, yes, he does in fact tend to have feelings _about_ his feelings, and he knows why the question makes him feel defensive, the way anger always used to make him feel –  
  
“Guilty,” he admits. “Not – not about all of it. I know anger isn’t an unreasonable response to – to parts of my past and present with Mark. But. But some of the ways I’ve been dealing with that anger.”  
  
“You sound unsure about that,” Dr. Wu observes. It’s not a criticism or a question as much as it is an invitation.  
  
Eduardo considers, remembering all the conversations they had about his father and invalidation, about re-learning everything he didn’t realize he believed about showing sadness (_“boys _do not_ cry, Eduardo”_) or joy (_“don’t be ostentatious”_) or anger (_“childish temper tantrums over _nothing_, why do you always overreact?”_). He remembers throwing up in Anthony’s kitchen sink and hating himself for being turned on by the memory of Mark’s mouth on him.  
  
“I feel guilty because I don’t like feeling like a bad person,” Eduardo says slowly, “and I felt like one after – after I lost control of my temper and acted vindictively. But I know that feeling anger is normal, and that I should try to deal with it better instead of denying it.”  
  
Dr. Wu says, “That’s good, Eduardo. But it’s important to remember that nobody is perfect. Everybody sometimes says and does things when they’re angry that they regret.”

Eduardo nods. It’s something they’ve had to go over many times. _Nobody’s perfect, everybody makes mistakes, it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure or a bad person or_ unlovable.  
  
“It’s also important to understand why you acted the way you did – accept how you _felt_; analyze how you _behaved_. So why did you act out your anger that way, Eduardo?”  
  
That’s a complicated question, with complicated answers. But Eduardo has an idea what she’s getting at, the core of it, the part he wants to deny.  
  
“I…” Eduardo says. “I think I have…sexual feelings, for Mark.”  
  
Oh God, he is well and truly _fucked_.  
  
(He thinks, panicked, about that oh-so-polite Facebook lawyer, _“Would you like to use my pen?”_)  
  
“You sound like that concerns you.”  
  
“Of course it _concerns_ me, it fucking _terrifies_ me!” Eduardo is too busy trying not to have a heart attack to be embarrassed by the outburst. Besides, Dr. Wu has seen worse.  
  
“Why is that, Eduardo?” she asks gently. “If there was a danger in this situation, the aspects within your control have been dealt with – the stories have been denied and you are getting a promotion.” After a pause, she says, “Mark has no power over you.”  
  
Eduardo almost snorts. He’s pretty sure that has never been true.  
  
“He has no more power over you than you allow him to have, Eduardo.”  
  
“So you think I’m overreacting?”  
  
“No,” Dr. Wu says clearly, deliberately. “I want you to understand why you are reacting the way you are. I want you to understand what it is you’re afraid of.”  
  
“I…” Eduardo breathes out carefully. “I have to think about it.”  
  
Dr. Wu nods. “The other thing I’d like for you to give some thought to is how you’ve been perceiving these events. Do you remember the cognitive exercises we did a few years ago, about black-and-white thinking?”  
  
“Yes, splitting,” he says and then flushes a little because, really. Could he make it any more obvious he’s read Wikipedia articles on his sundry psychological hang-ups?  
  
“I’d like you to do one of them again. I’ll give you a list of ten pairs of words; they are opposites, extremes. Your task is to write down the best word to describe the middle ground between those two extremes.”  
  
Eduardo takes the list from her and starts writing.  
  
When he finishes, Dr. Wu hands him another sheet of paper. “This is the same exercise, which you did three years ago. I want you to look at your answers separately, and then to compare them. Look for patterns in the connotations of the words you chose. Look for differences over time. Think about what they say about your concept of the ‘middle ground’ or ‘grey areas’.  
  
“We’re nearly out of time. But you can email or call me if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of your thoughts.”  
  
Eduardo takes a seat in reception to compare the exercises. Some of his answers are the same, but some are tellingly different. For #3 _success, failure_, three years ago he wrote “mediocrity” after crossing something else out (“<strike>disapp</strike>”). This time, he wrote “striving”. He had no answer for #7 last time – he vaguely remembers arguing that there was no middle ground between _depressed_ and _ecstatic_, only somewhat less extreme versions of each emotion. This time, he wrote “content”.  
  
Some, he’s not quite sure what to make of. For #2 _hot, cold_, is it relevant that he wrote “warm” this time instead of “lukewarm”?  
  
Eduardo leaves the building feeling fairly confident that it means he thinks in more generally positive terms now and that he sees the middle ground more clearly than he used to. He knows – more importantly, he _believes_ – that most things in life are not as simple as either-or, all-or-nothing, good-or-bad.  
  
_People aren’t either._  
  
Rationally, this is an obvious fact. Emotionally, it was something Eduardo had to work at. He and Dr. Wu did many exercises to enable him to recognize when he’s perceiving and reacting to others in polarized ways.  
  
It’s how he became friendly with Dustin again, with Sean at all. It’s how he learned to stop chasing after his father’s approval. It’s how he grew up and moved on.

Eduardo thought he’d applied it to Mark and everything in their history. No; he knows he did, because it wasn’t easy and it hurt like hell. But now he wonders if his mental image of Mark isn’t still too extreme. Because everything that’s happened recently – it all points to there being evidence Eduardo didn’t have before, variables left out of his equations, and maybe his view of Mark and of their history isn’t entirely accurate.  
  
The whole way back to his apartment, Eduardo turns it over in his mind. It’s a small miracle that he doesn’t get into an accident.  
  
Eduardo is good with patterns. Math and chess and weather and economics, all of it patterns; they only have to be found and Eduardo has always enjoyed the challenge of unearthing them.  
  
But the thing is, it’s made him overconfident in the past. At nineteen, he defied his father’s advice and he bet big on a pattern only he could see, and he was right. But getting just one calculation wrong, misunderstanding or missing just one variable – it can throw the entire pattern out of whack, and then you’re blindsided by a storm or a checkmate or a stock dive (_or a betrayal_). He’s bet big and been wrong before too.  
  
Eduardo doesn’t know if he wants to try again, to try to find patterns with Mark, because his own judgment has proven seriously lacking in that regard.  
  
(_Unless it wasn’t after all, unless he just had inadequate data but not the wrong algorithm…_)  
  
He could prove that Mark never cared about him, prove Dustin wrong, prove himself right. He could do that and finally be free of any lingering doubts, free of regret, free of _Mark_, once and for all. He could have what he’s wanted since the depositions ended.  
  
But if Eduardo opens that door, that can of worms, again, there’s a possibility, however minuscule…  
  
He could prove otherwise. That he’s wrong, or he was right at the start. That it wasn’t all in his head, he didn’t imagine the best friendship of his life, and Mark did, _does_, care. That maybe Eduardo could have what he’d wanted until the depositions ended, when he got hundreds of millions of dollars and shares that would make him a billionaire and his name where it belonged and _none_ of what he wanted.  
  
Eduardo can’t find that second one anything but fantastical. Fantastical but terrifying, even just to entertain the thought of it.  
  
Opening that door (and it isn’t a can of worms at all, it’s Pandora’s fucking box) is _dangerous_, Eduardo feels it down to bone and breath and blood. It’s dangerous the way that _Mark_ is dangerous, in that juxtaposition of vulnerable and vicious, that brilliance that blazes and blinds, that _want_ that might never amount to anything other than a wound which never quite heals.  
  
It all really comes down to one thing, Eduardo thinks. Is he willing to risk being hurt again?  
  
\--  
  
The voicemail Eduardo leaves Mark is simple and to the point. _“I don’t know if you’re screening your calls or just ignoring anything besides a computer. Either way, call me back.”_  
  
It’s fourteen hours later and two in the morning in Singapore when Mark returns his call.  
  
Eduardo takes a moment to consider how to interpret this, because apparently he’s going to take another stab at that.  
  
It could be that Mark made him wait out of self-centered obliviousness to other people’s feelings, or out of a conscious or subconscious desire to punish him. Or it could be that Mark called back as soon as he had time to do so. It could be that he’s being intentionally rude by calling when Eduardo is trying to sleep, or that he’s being his version of polite by calling when he knows it’s highly probable Eduardo is at home alone, or that he simply doesn’t consider either the time difference or that two in the morning is late for most people on a week night.  
  
Without coming to any conclusions, Eduardo picks up on the third ring. “Hi, Mark.”  
  
\--  
_A/N:_ The depiction of therapy in this part is based upon my limited knowledge of psychology and research into therapy methods best suited to people who have (my interpretation of) some of Eduardo’s issues. However, I’m very far from being an expert, so please excuse any inaccuracies.


	14. Chapter 14

“Hi,” Mark says. “That has to be the rudest voicemail you’ve left in your life.”  
  
Eduardo notes his own impulse to react defensively with an almost clinical air. It’s understandable but not rational – Mark insults people over many things, but lack of politeness would never be one of them. “I bet it was far more polite than any voicemail you’ve left in your life,” he says.  
  
“A safe bet,” Mark acknowledges.  
  
_Maybe that is,_ Eduardo thinks, _but you’re not._  
  
And yet, here he is. Gambling.  
  
Eduardo takes a deep breath. “I wanted to clear something up. The driver was a back-up plan. Just in case you lost track of the time or something came up at Facebook or…something. When you arrived on time, I had every intention of going to the airport with you.”  
  
“People who aren’t friends don’t usually drive each other to the airport,” Mark says.  
  
Eduardo stares at the swirls of shadow and light on his windowpanes and bites his tongue until he tastes blood. He doesn’t want to argue with Mark, doesn’t want to repeat the same old patterns. He wants…he just wants…  
  
He’s not sure what, but he knows he wants it.  
  
“You offered,” Eduardo reminds him.  
  
“I offered when I thought you wanted to be friends again.” Mark sounds cold, closed-off, but after a pause, he says quietly, almost a question, “I have no idea what you want, now.”  
  
“That makes us even, then,” Eduardo says, phrasing it almost like a question too.  
  
_What do you want, Mark? Do you want to be friends again? Do you want to fuck? Or do you want something else – something –_  
  
Even in his thoughts, Eduardo can’t quite finish that question.  
  
There’s a long pause on the other end. “Even,” Mark repeats flatly. “We’re ‘even’?”  
  
“That’s not – I meant that I don’t know what you want either, Mark.”  
  
“I find that difficult to believe.”  
  
“Why, because you’re always so clear? Because you never say anything ambiguously, and your actions never contradict your implications?”  
  
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Eduardo,” Mark says, and he doesn’t sound interested in learning either. It’s a tone Eduardo remembers from Harvard, from after: _I’m not even going to waste the time it would take to tell you how uninteresting this is._  
  
“It means that I don’t know what you mean either! It means that you get jealous over a waitress and Anthony and _Chris_ and that you won’t do anything I ask unless it’s sexual, apparently, but that you also get annoyed with me when I say we’re not friends even though that’s pretty damn obvious, and that you never _say_ anything about what it all means or what it used to mean. You never explain _anything_, Mark.”  
  
“You don’t really want an explanation from me, Eduardo.” Mark sounds typically sure of himself, but he also sounds tired. Now that Eduardo is listening for it, Mark sounds like he’s the kind of tired that is bone-deep and has little to do with sleep deprivation. “You already made up your mind years ago that the explanation for everything was that I’m an asshole and you’re a saint, that I did the things I did for petty or nonexistent reasons and that you did absolutely nothing wrong at all.”  
  
That’s not quite true. Maybe it was once, but Eduardo went through therapy, thought and talked about his relationship with Mark and all the things that revolved around it, and he knows he made mistakes, both business and personal.  
  
But he can’t just tell Mark that when Mark never acknowledges that he made even a single, slight mistake. When Mark would seize on the admission as if it justified all of his own actions, which it most definitely does not. When Eduardo is terrified to bare any more of himself to the sharp edges that make up so much of Mark.  
  
So Eduardo doesn’t deny, doesn’t interrupt, and Mark says, “Anything I say, you won’t believe, so what’s the point?”  
  
“How can you expect me to believe you easily, after -”  
  
“I expect the opposite, actually, which is what I just said. You didn’t answer the question. Is there a point to me spelling things out when you won’t listen to me anyway?”  
  
Eduardo tries to swallow around the lump in his throat; tries not to wonder if Mark is referring to the present and to the past, to depositions and dorm rooms, to New York and California and the space in between.

“In other words,” Eduardo says, “you won’t lower yourself to explaining anything because (a) it’s not your problem that I’m too stupid to get it on my own, (b) it’s not like you owe me any explanations, and (c) you don’t get any benefit out of it, so why should you bother?”  
  
“That’s not. That isn’t. How I would put it.”  
  
By Mark’s standards, that’s almost comforting. But it makes Eduardo come to a conclusion that honestly hurts a lot more than he thought it would.  
  
Whatever Mark feels for him, it’s not – it isn’t…what Dustin called it. It’s selfish and jealous and resentful. It’s like Mark thinks Eduardo owes him something, and no matter how much Eduardo gives him, it’s never enough.  
  
(_Eduardo_ isn’t enough, not compliant enough, not smart enough, not _good_ enough –)  
  
“I – I’m going to let you go,” Eduardo says, almost choking on the words. “I wanted to tell you that I didn’t mean to act unappreciative, and I didn’t mean to be – to offend you or anything when I said we weren’t friends. That’s just…the way things are now, I guess. Have a good night.”  
  
\--  
  
“You came back too early, Eduardo,” Suzana says as she pulls him into a hug. “I was getting used to your apartment. Have you ever Googled squatter’s rights?”  
  
“I missed you too, Suzy,” Eduardo says with heavy sarcasm, hugging her right back.  
  
(The hug lasts a little too long, Eduardo holds on a little too tight, but Suzana doesn’t mention it, knows the signs of his efforts not to drown in a dark mood.)  
  
When they break apart, she sticks a manicured index finger in his face. “Now start talking.”  
  
“What are you -”  
  
“You started screening my calls and acting weird while you were off in the land of plastic surgery and the digerati. The Pacific Ocean kind of got in the way of me beating the full story out of you, but it’s gone now, so you will tell me everything.”  
  
“How exactly is the Pacific Ocean ‘gone’?” Eduardo asks, noting not for the first time that all of his close friends are, in their own individual ways, out of their minds.  
  
(Well, excluding Chris, but if Dustin is to be believed, it’s only a matter of time before he has a psychotic break and becomes the craziest of them all.)  
  
“You’re being evasive and not subtly.”  
  
“I haven’t even had coffee yet!”  
  
“It’s noon.”  
  
“Yes, in SGT, but I’m still in PDT.”  
  
“I told you to use those jet lag calculators, Eduardo -”  
  
“Yeah, okay, less talking and more making me coffee, Suzy.”  
  
This, naturally, results in Eduardo making coffee for both of them while Suzana puts her feet up on his coffee table and investigates what movies are on. She’s only biding her time, he knows.  
  
As soon as they sit down and Eduardo takes one sip of blessed caffeine, Suzana is back to demanding full disclosure. Eduardo talks.  
  
“Jesus,” she says when he’s done.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
She looks skeptically at their mugs. “I think we chose the wrong beverages for this conversation.”  
  
“I think,” Eduardo says wearily, “that I am still too jet-lagged for this conversation.”  
  
“Okay, then. How big of a raise did you get when you took the new regional VP position?”  
  
“What do you mean? I haven’t decided between the U.S. and Brazil yet.”  
  
Suzana arches an eyebrow at him. She opens her mouth, but seems to reconsider before she speaks. “You know what? I forgot to mention to you that my next business trip to the EU is going to put me in Italy and then France just in time for the fashion weeks in Milan _and_ in Paris.”  
  
“You are so lucky sometimes it’s sickening,” Eduardo says, and after she accuses him of envy and he bitches about how Sean apparently knows Giorgio Armani (_Giorgio. Armani._ Life is incredibly unfair.), they agree that they have to go to the next New York or London one together.  
  
This somehow subsequently turns into an agreement to spend the rest of the day vegging out with movies, popcorn and kuih.  
  
When they’re in the middle of one of the _Ocean’s Eleven_ movies, Eduardo nudges Suzana’s ankle bone with a socked toe. “You’ll, um, visit me wherever I end up moving, right?”  
  
“Visit? You’ll have more difficulty getting me to leave.”  
  
Eduardo smiles and steals some of her popcorn.  
  
\--  
  
Eduardo dreams about bathroom stalls again and wakes up incredibly turned on. Jet lag is a weird, weird thing.

\--

Which is he feeling, Chris asks himself – relief or regret?  
  
(Dustin went through a phase when he was obsessed with _Kill Bill_. Chris considers himself lucky just for being able to talk Dustin out of walking around in a yellow jumpsuit and trying to carry a katana through airport security.)  
  
The latest media maelstrom to hit Facebook is dying down, Chris miraculously has neither damaged friends nor ulcers to worry about, and he can return to politics. He’s relieved on all counts.  
  
On the other hand, that means he should start preparing to leave again, to find someone to take on this position permanently, to say goodbye to Dustin and Mark for a second time.  
  
So there’s a little regret in there too as Chris hunts Mark down to discuss recruitment. He’s already talked to the head of HR.  
  
It’s strange that he has to hunt Mark down at all, though. Mark is usually holed up in his office like he thinks it’s the Bat Cave.  
  
Over the past few days, he’s been a bit…off. Not as bad as Chris was expecting it to be when Eduardo left, or as Dustin was forecasting while showing Chris his blueprints for a bomb shelter, but almost more unnerving because of that. Mark in a bad mood is something Chris has dealt with many times before. But Mark is acting less depressed or angry than he is vaguely confused, like he’s encountered something unexpected and – well, Dustin’s Does Not Compute emoticons might be _slightly_ appropriate, even if Chris wouldn’t admit that on pain of death.  
  
Chris finds Mark in the cafeteria, staring out the window.  
  
“Mark? I need to discuss something with you in private.”  
  
“It’s raining,” Mark observes.  
  
“Yes, I can see that. Should we go to your office or…?”  
  
“Did you know that the western side of Singapore tends to get more rain than the eastern side, due to rain shadow? The city-state also has monsoon seasons twice a year.”  
  
Chris takes a surreptitious look around to make sure no one is within hearing range, and then demands, “Are you drunk?”  
  
Mark glances away from the window long enough to give him a disdainful look. “It’s ten a.m.”  
  
“And you have non-existent or alien circadian rhythms, so I repeat, are you drunk?”  
  
“No.”  
  
_Then why are you talking about Eduardo?_ Chris wonders. On the other hand, Mark was being his version of subtle by bringing up Singapore and saying no names, and he doesn’t even attempt subtlety when he’s drunk.  
  
“What’s this about, Mark?” Chris asks.  
  
“Uncertainty,” Mark says, sounding absolutely certain. “It’s a factor in weather forecasting as well as economics, information science, physics…psychology. Related to, but distinct from, the concept of risk. Not that I agree entirely with the Knightian differentiation.”  
  
“Knightian…as in the economist Frank Knight?”  
  
“Yes,” Mark says impatiently. “I have my issues with Taleb too – though his provocation of statisticians is amusing – but he had a point in _The Black Swan_.”  
  
“The ballet movie?” Chris asks in bewilderment. “With what’s her name?”  
  
“_Natalie Portman_. But of course not the _movie_, the _book_, and notice the definite article. You went to _Harvard_, Chris.”  
  
“I know what a definite article is, _thanks_ -”  
  
“I was referring to your ignorance towards an alumna of your own alma mater.”  
  
“Excuse me, Mark, for not speaking _circle_,” Chris snaps, because _shit_, talking to Mark can be confusing and exhausting sometimes.

“Taleb’s criticism of uncertainty versus risk was valid. Odds can’t always be known; they have to be discovered.”  
  
“And this applies to Eduardo how?”  
  
Mark is tracing the path of a raindrop on the window pane with his gaze, and he doesn’t deny that this is about Eduardo. “I doubt he’d have a high opinion of Taleb, who’s a little like the Sean Parker of the economics world. Then again, Wardo and Sean are apparently _friends_ now, so.”  
  
Chris has suspected for a while that bothered Mark, but he’s running out of patience here. “Mark. I have something important to discuss with you; I am not going to go chasing after whatever your point is through bizarre metaphors involving meteorology and economic theory.”  
  
“The point is…the point is…” Mark falters, and then fires off almost too fast to follow, “If you can’t compute the odds, should you take the risk?”  
  
Chris feels a little slow on the uptake for only realizing now that Mark has been – in a very strange, round-about, Markian way – trying to ask for advice. He doesn’t feel guilty though, once Mark speaks again.  
  
“Try to answer without quoting inspirational speeches about ‘hope’ at me, if you can manage.”  
  
Relief, Chris decides. He is definitely relieved to be leaving soon.  
  
“I think that if the potential reward is great enough, any risk is worth taking,” he says. “And if you want to criticize me for being an optimist, perhaps you shouldn’t have asked for my opinion.”  
  
But Mark doesn’t criticize him. He just nods, and then they head to his office to discuss hiring a new head of PR.  
  
It only occurs to Chris later that maybe the reason Mark asked for his opinion is that he _needs_ some optimism.  
  
\--  
  
Eduardo stares at his inbox for a full minute before he rubs a hand across his forehead – a mannerism he thought he’d left behind when he left the U.S.  
  
In between a forward from Suzana and an email from a former girlfriend and current friend is a seemingly innocuous message with a subject line _phone conversation_. The sender is Mark Zuckerberg.  
  
Mark doesn’t email him. Ever. The last email Eduardo received from Mark was the one inviting him to the millionth member party.  
  
Then again, it’s not like they’d talked on the phone in years either, until Eduardo made that call a few days ago.  
  
Eduardo used to think Mark never attempted to contact him out of a simple lack of interest. Now he wonders if Mark kept silent at least partly because he thought Eduardo didn’t want to hear from him, because he was too proud to make an effort if there was a chance he’d be rejected. It seems unlikely, but Eduardo reminds himself: _no one is black-and-white, all-or-nothing_.  
  
As much as he tends to paint Mark as invincible and inscrutable in his head, it’s not true and it never has been. Eduardo is well aware that Mark has insecurities. He remembers Mark after Erica broke up with him. He remembers how obvious it was to him at the time that Mark was hurt, beneath all that vicious anger. He remembers wondering later if Erica hadn’t done more than bruise Mark’s ego, if she broke his heart.  
  
(He asked once, in drunken stumble from a frat party to Kirkland, if Mark was in love with Erica. Mark didn’t snap at him, just rolled his eyes and said, _“You’re such a sappy drunk, Wardo.”_)  
  
Because Mark said “I need you” to him first, no qualifiers. And Mark was genuinely upset after speaking to Erica the night they met Christy and Alice. He also made no further attempts at contacting her after she made it clear she didn’t want him to; Mark made sure BU heard about thefacebook but retained some vague, vestigial respect for her wishes.  
  
It’s possible he never contacted Eduardo for the same reason. Though Eduardo has difficulty imagining Mark giving him the same treatment as his first love.  
  
(_“I don’t love _her_,”_ Mark said, after Eduardo kept pestering him about it. _“I-I mean, I don’t _love_ her.”_)  
  
Eduardo is still staring at that email like it might secretly be a venomous snake.

_Just when you think you’re out,_ he reflects and then grimaces, because of course he’s quoting one of Mark’s favourite actors and movies.  
  
He clicks on the email; wonders why he bothered pretending he might not have.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo (esaverin@gmail.com)
    From: Mark Zuckerberg (im_ceo_bitch@facebook.com)
    Subject: phone conversation
    
    you giggled at star wars episode ii at count dooku’s name because it sounds like something dirty in portuguese

  
  
…okay. Eduardo wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but this is really not it. He can’t quite believe Mark remembers that, or paid any attention to it in the first place.  
  
He sends a brief, to-the-point reply.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark (im_ceo_bitch@facebook.com)
    From: Saverin, Eduardo (esaverin@gmail.com)
    Subject: RE: phone conversation
    
    ???

  
  
Mark’s reply is almost instantaneous.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    you said i never say things.  i'm saying.

  
  
Eduardo reads that over a few times and breathes carefully in and out.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    *What* are you saying though, Mark?
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    you seem to be under the impression that i never considered you my friend.

  
  
Biting his lip, Eduardo rereads the first message. And, yeah, he has difficulty imagining Mark remembering that kind of random thing about…well, _anyone_, but certainly not someone he had a strictly sexual interest in. Mark’s word choice in the most recent email is probably deliberate too – it strongly implies that Eduardo is wrong, but not in the way Mark would usually say such a thing, blunt and brutal.  
  
But Eduardo can’t rely on his own inferences.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    Did you ever consider me your friend?
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    of course. that was always part of the problem.

  
  
Two words should not be able to have such an impact on Eduardo. Aside from, like, “you’re dying” or “I’m pregnant” or something. But to have Mark answer a question that’s been plaguing him for years, to finally _know_ that it wasn’t _all_ just him projecting and being used…  
  
(It’s like there’s been something buried tight and painful at his core, a vice around his heart, for so long that he’s forgotten what it feels like to be free of it. To breathe easy, light. To not have to carry that weight around with him anymore.)  
  
Eduardo feels a flicker of doubt, a flash of _don’t believe him, you can’t believe him_, but he knows that’s irrational. There is a difference between a reasonable distrust of Mark and suspecting that he’s lying about every single thing at all times. Mark has no reason to lie about this, unless it’s part of the most needlessly convoluted and relying-on-chance effort to get someone into bed ever, and Mark is not a Bond villain.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    I’m not sure what you’re getting at in the second sentence. But thank you for answering me, Mark.
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    you believe me, right?

  
  
Eduardo thinks of Mark asking him the same question in New York, and thinks that he probably misinterpreted what prompted Mark to ask. It was probably a straightforward question, just like this one.  
  
It’s a shame Eduardo doesn’t have a straightforward answer.  
  
(_If you considered me your friend, Mark, then how could you do what you did? How could you screw me over and then spend years acting like you didn’t give a shit? How could you, how could you,_ howcouldyouhowcouldyou –)  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: phone conversation
    
    I’d like to.

As soon as he sends the email, Eduardo worries it comes off as too…something, and quickly sends another.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: [no subject]
    
    I don’t mean that with any subtext. I really mean I’d like to believe you.
    
    I’m just finding it difficult to reconcile our very different views on our history.
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: 
    
    okay

  
  
Their conversation, if it can be called that, peters off.  
  
A few hours later, though, Mark forwards him what looks like a joke involving binary code and chickens.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: Fwd:
    
    Hilarious, but shouldn’t you be working?
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: Fwd:
    
    refer to my email address.

  
  
That draws a laugh out of Eduardo.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: Fwd:
    
    Okay, but this just means you’re going to stay at the office even later than usual, doesn’t it?
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Fwd:
    
    yeah, probably.

  
  
A few hours later, Eduardo forwards Mark an article from _The Economist_ about karōshi. If anyone’s at risk of losing his health to overwork…  
  
Mark responds with a _Journal of International Business Studies_ article contrasting Japanese and American economic ideologies and working environments.  
  
Eduardo sends back articles on workaholic behaviour in North America, along with health articles on the importance of sleep and the dangers of excessive sugar and caffeine intake for good measure.  
  
Mark sends him a YouTube clip about avian cannibalism.  
  
After nearly getting coffee up his nose laughing, Eduardo quickly replies.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: Fwd:
    
    A big fan of YouTube, are you?

  
  
Suffice it to say, things escalate from there.  
  
\--  
_A/N:_ The name “Dooku” apparently sounds like the Portuguese phrase _do cu_, “from/of the ass”, or _dou o cu_, which is even cruder. In the Brazilian dub of the _Star Wars_ films, his name was changed to “Dookan”. But I am still no expert in any kind of Portuguese, so please forgive any errors.  
  
Also, please forgive the delay in posting this part! I'm really trying to avoid schedule slip; rl just became unexpectedly busy over the past few weeks. Updates should be back to normal now, though. Thanks to everyone who's sticking with this! :)


	15. Chapter 15

Thank you to everyone for being so understanding about the delay with the previous part and to everyone still reading. You guys are the best! <3 <3 <3  
\--  
  
In between the back-and-forth which is still so easy to fall into, still comes naturally in a way Eduardo is pretty sure it shouldn’t, Mark periodically sends him a non sequitur of an email.  
  
_you used to hum sometimes when you studied  
  
you love green olives and hate black olives, but you never protested if dustin ordered them on a pizza  
  
your econ study group was comprised of people you genuinely liked (jamal, colin, sarah), people you unaccountably believed were smarter than you (hannah, ren), and people you found annoying but treated nicely anyway (preston, ricardo)_  
  
Eduardo doesn’t generally reply because he’s not sure how to. He could ask how Mark was even aware of his humming when he was wired in. He could ask how Mark knew he hates black olives when he was careful not to be caught picking them off pizza so that their order wouldn’t be amended just for his sake. He could ask how Mark remembers the names of a bunch of people he met once or twice and precisely what Eduardo’s opinions of them all were.  
  
But he wants to make sure Mark knows he’s reading them, appreciates them for what they…might be.  
  
He sends Mark YouTube links to his mãe’s favourite fado and bossa nova music, the songs of his childhood that he sometimes found himself humming long after leaving home. He mentions having split a pizza with Suzana the other day, no olives in sight. He notes that Jamal is still one of his Facebook friends and is there a way to block him from his news feed?  
  
(_how do you not already know how to do this?_ Mark shoots back, and sure enough, when Eduardo next logs on, Jamal remains on his friends list but has vanished from his news feed.)  
  
All in all, it’s almost worse than the sort-of-faking-but-maybe-not-really camaraderie from before. At least before, Chris and Dustin were involved too, and Eduardo had an excuse for his behaviour. Now, it’s just him and Mark emailing like they’re friends and Eduardo can’t blame it all on his own desire to avoid a fight and/or fuck.  
  
It’s worrying that the two are equally likely and not mutually exclusive.  
  
Eduardo emails Dr. Wu, attaching one exchange with Mark about _Food, Inc._, simply asking if she’s a hundred percent sure Eduardo is not crazy, because he’s unfamiliar with navigating the middle ground with Mark and he’s worried about doing it wrong.  
  
He gets a reply that is both reassuring and warning at once, a more carefully worded version of _don’t invalidate your own feelings, but don’t let them overwhelm you either._  
  
Eduardo is trying.  
  
And it kind of – Eduardo doesn’t want to get his hopes up, doesn’t want to be a too-trusting, too-needy idiot again, but it sort of seems like…maybe Mark is trying too.  
  
And Eduardo doesn’t know what to do with that. He wants to know why Mark never tried before, back when Eduardo was desperate for even the slightest bit of effort, the smallest hint of caring. He wants to know what Mark is trying _for_, if he wants to be friends again or…otherwise. He wants to know why all the little ways Mark shows that he felt friendship then and nostalgia since are platonic, when Mark has made it clear that things on his end weren’t platonic.  
  
(He doesn’t know if he wants the details of how Mark felt back then, simultaneously eager to hear that it wasn’t all about sex and terrified to assume, both uneasy and excited at the prospect of hearing about Mark’s fantasies, adding a few to his own growing list…)  
  
So Eduardo doesn’t say anything about it, or about his own ambivalence, or about the dinner he has with a client who sweetly informs him that she can no longer do business with him due to his “immoral lifestyle” but that she will pray for him.  
  
It’s probably a combination of all three that leads Eduardo to go for a long, strenuous run that night. He goes for another in the morning, because his trip to the U.S. really ruined his routine. That weekend, he and Suzana swing up to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve to go hiking. If exercise also helps him feel less stressed out and less inclined to murder his clients, so be it.

Eduardo always thought the English expression ‘when it rains, it pours’ was bizarre and not meteorologically sound. But when he receives a call from his father announcing that he’s going to stop by for a visit on his way to Tokyo, Eduardo understands the expression all too well.  
  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up at the airport, Pai,” Eduardo says once they’ve been seated.  
  
“It is better that you not miss any more work due to personal matters than you already have,” his father says, eyes already on the menu.  
  
“…right.”  
  
“Barbequed stingray?” his father reads aloud skeptically. “Katong laksa?”  
  
“Eating’s a national pastime here, and food something of a national obsession,” Eduardo says with a fond smile. The diverse cuisine is one of his favourite things about Singapore, one of the things he’s going to miss.  
  
His father would never be so boorish as to make a derogatory comment, but the way he raises his eyebrows over the rim of his glasses makes it clear he disdains Eduardo’s choice of restaurant.  
  
“There’s quite a bit of Indian food on the menu, which you like,” Eduardo points out.  
  
“I can see that.”  
  
Eduardo stops trying.  
  
After they order, his father gets around to interrogation. “While I am relieved that your recent airing of dirty laundry has not done irreparable damage to your career, why would you even consider moving back to Brazil, Eduardo? There is a reason we left.”  
  
“I’m not a child on a kidnapping list anymore, Pai.”  
  
“No. What you are is a billionaire who doesn’t even travel with a security detail.”  
  
Instead of focusing on the barely-veiled insult there, Eduardo aims for a calm, rational refutation. “São Paulo’s crime rate has gone down in recent years.”  
  
“It is still high. Higher than most American cities. The gangs are still powerful – there was that outbreak of violence only a few years ago where all those police officers were killed. The kidnapping problem is as bad as ever, if not worse.”  
  
“I have K&R insurance.”  
  
“You have had it since you were born. Forgive me if I would still rather you not lose a finger or an ear to proof of life. And that is under the presumption that the kidnappers do not realize how much money you have…and how much money your alleged ex-lover has -”  
  
“Pai- ”  
  
“- and demand the highest ransom in history. Don’t interrupt, Eduardo, it is rude.” He pauses to take a sip of his wine and Eduardo tries not to stab at his noodles.  
  
His father always does this. He lectures Eduardo like a child on everything from his manners to his clothing to his handshake. He scolds him for every little mistake or fault, and for supposed vanity about any personal triumph. He treats Eduardo’s emotions like they’re both irrelevant and irrational to the point of potential mental illness.  
  
“Do you know the lengths you would have to go to be safe in Brazil?” his father demands. “You used to complain on vacations about the armoured cars and gated community. Now, you could travel only by helicopter to avoid carjacking. You would need employees to do the simplest errands for you, because even stopping by a bank machine is too dangerous. Do you want to live like that?”  
  
“Pai, is it possible that you’re being a bit paranoid?” Eduardo asks. He doesn’t wince when his father sets down his fork, but it’s a near thing.  
  
“Your lack of concern for your own safety is…worrisome. Are you acting depressed again?”  
  
“‘Acting’? Pai, that’s not -”  
  
“You are too sensitive, Eduardo. You worry too much about nonsense and not enough about important things, such as your reputation and your safety. My reasons for not wanting you to move back to Brazil are valid.”  
  
_Unlike yours_, he’s saying, because he’s always saying that. Eduardo could point out that his father is being unreasonable, but he doesn’t.  
  
His father only talked to him about it once (_“You have no idea what true fear is, Eduardo. Until the police tell you that your son is a major kidnapping target because of your business success, you will never know what fear is.”_), and Eduardo isn’t going to use it against him in an argument. It’s one of the few memories he has of his father expressing love without it being his usual (demanding, impossible) brand of tough love, and he won’t tarnish that.

He also does bring up some good points, damn it.  
  
Of course, Eduardo has counter-arguments. He could point out all the ways São Paulo is an amazing city culturally and economically and that his personal net worth makes him a target for kidnapping regardless of where he lives. It means he should be careful, not stop living.  
  
“You are also nearing the stage of life wherein one marries and has children. You may be careless about your own safety, but that of your family? I think I raised you better than that. I have been wrong on that count before, however.”  
  
The hypocrisy is a little too much for Eduardo to take. “So you think I should make a decision about my career for personal reasons? _You_? And for personal reasons that are only future possibilities?”  
  
“I think,” his father says softly, “that you have made _many_ career decisions for personal reasons. Childish and sentimental ones, at that. I was hoping you had grown out of it by now, or at least with this bizarre preoccupation with Mark Zuckerberg, but you seem to enjoy disappointing me.”  
  
“You -” Eduardo laughs bitterly. “I can’t win with you, can I? If I choose to go to Brazil, you’ll say it’s because I’m running away from Mark again. If I choose to go to the States, you’ll say it’s because I have some sort of attachment to Mark.”  
  
“Would I be incorrect in either case?”  
  
“Then what do you want from me, Pai?”  
  
“I want you to calm down, first of all. You take far too many things as personal attacks; in particular, any attempts I make at giving you advice.”  
  
Eduardo could point out that he doesn’t _ask_ for his father’s patronizing advice that frequently _is_ comprised largely of personal attacks, but he’d only be accused of overreacting again.  
  
“The other thing I want, Eduardo, is for you to pursue what you want, but for the right reasons. Professional, practical reasons.”  
  
“I…I’m not sure what I want,” Eduardo admits.  
  
And it’s another question to mull over, along with Dr. Wu’s. _What is he afraid of? What does he want?_  
  
Evidently his father has run out of his very limited supply of patience and his version of encouragement. “Perhaps you should figure it out then,” he says tersely, and then starts grilling Eduardo about his investment portfolio and criticizing the number of risks he allegedly takes.  
  
Fortunately, at this stage in his life, Eduardo has learned to tune his father out when appropriate.  
  
\--  
  
After Eduardo relays bits of his conversation with his father to Dr. Wu over the phone, she asks him why he hasn’t made a decision about his move yet.  
  
Eduardo recalls leaving São Paulo (vague impressions of being afraid and not knowing why, of his pai hugging him with trembling arms), leaving Miami for Harvard (taking further steps in the future planned for him, and chasing freedom from that plan at the same time), leaving the U.S. altogether (escaping from corrosive memories and dashed hopes).  
  
“Because I – I feel like I have more control, this time,” Eduardo says. “I mean, obviously there are some things out of my control that are making my move away from Singapore more…convenient. But this promotion was something I already wanted. It’s like I’m getting _to_ something, not getting _away from_ something.”  
  
(He recalls not leaving New York for Palo Alto.)  
  
“It’s about needing to feel like I have at least some degree of control over my own life,” Eduardo says. “But I can’t procrastinate and end up panicking, or blur the lines instead of drawing them in reasonable places.”  
  
\--  
  
The following night, Eduardo goes out again, but this time it’s fun. His coworkers insist on taking him out for drinks now that it’s been announced he’s off to the U.S.  
  
(“Also, y’know, it’s Wednesday,” Aqil says. “How else are we going to get through the rest of the week if not with alcohol?”)  
  
They go through Tiger Beer and dirty martinis like they’re still in college, bitching about office politics and annoying clients, ribbing Adam about his long-standing crush on Linh, and arguing about soccer.  
  
“Next round’s on me,” Eduardo says, and heads for the bar with a chorus of tipsy cheers following him.  
  
After ordering, he waits by the bar and a man at the other end catches his eye. Specifically, his curly blond-brown hair.

The hair is where the resemblance to Mark ends, Eduardo notes as he looks the man up and down. This guy is taller, more broadly built, dressed in a suit, and wearing glasses. He’s attractive enough, Eduardo supposes, though seeing his mouth on the rim of his glass does nothing for Eduardo’s libido.  
  
Which is _so_ not helpful in resolving the mostly straight vs. oblivious bisexual debate.  
  
Shit. The guy has noticed Eduardo staring at him. Eduardo quickly faces forward, flushing, and prays for the bartender to return quickly. But the bartender is talking to a woman who could model for breast implants, so that’s not likely.  
  
“Hi,” says a voice next to him, British-accented baritone, and Eduardo puts on a polite smile as he faces the curly-haired man he was so blatantly checking out before.  
  
Who is now checking him out just as blatantly. Turnabout is fair play, after all.  
  
“Um, hi,” Eduardo says, and then reminds himself that despite the hair, this is _not_ Mark, which means that Eduardo does not have to stumble and blush like a teenager. That he can, in fact, charm and flirt quite well.  
  
Five minutes later, Eduardo knows that this guy’s name is Philip, that he works out of the UK embassy as an interpreter, that he’s fluent in all four of Singapore’s official languages as well as Italian and French, and that he would sleep with Eduardo in a heartbeat. His intelligence, his accent, and his laughing green eyes bump him up from ‘attractive enough’ to ‘pretty damn hot’, in Eduardo’s opinion.  
  
But Eduardo keeps glancing at his hair, and feeling a strange mixture of attraction and guilt.  
  
(He thinks of the guy who sold the story about Mark, of his skinny frame and dark eyes too big for his face, and feels his stomach curdle. It feels a little like finding out his high school girlfriend cheated on him, and a little like watching Mark look at Sean like he was a god.)  
  
“Damn, you’ve got a boyfriend, haven’t you?” Philip asks when Eduardo excuses himself. “A genius banker boyfriend who moonlights as a male model or something.”  
  
Eduardo laughs. “No, no. Just…it’s complicated.”  
  
“Quoting a Facebook relationship status at me. I think the romance is over.” Philip smiles to show no hard feelings and heads off, while Eduardo tries to figure out if the irony is hilarious or horrifying.  
  
He heads back to his table with the drinks finally secured, but he only has one more himself. Getting drunk and hooking up with some random person would feel like a cop-out, an easy but unhealthy way of dealing, and Eduardo is finished with those.  
  
When he gets home, he types up an email instead of going to bed. He’s been thinking about Dr. Wu’s advice, and about seeing things in black-and-white, and about his father’s visit. He’s been thinking that he has to start somewhere.  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: [no subject]
    
    I shouldn’t have brought up my father during the depositions.
    
    It wasn’t fair of me to act like my problems with him were your fault.

  
  
He gets a reply within minutes.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE:
    
    i used to seriously contemplate hacking his accounts whenever i was drunk.

  
  
Eduardo rakes a hand through his hair, wondering how to take that.  
  
Back at Harvard, it wouldn’t have surprised him. Mark wasn’t protective, per se, but he did give the impression that if Eduardo ever did away with his morals and asked Mark to hack into a professor’s computer or to humiliate a rival in the Investors’ Association or to – well, do pretty much anything underhandedly vengeful on his behalf – Mark would have done it, no questions asked. Eduardo was ninety-nine percent certain that with one word to Mark, he could ruin his own father, a thought which made him feel simultaneously terrified, guilty and exhilarated, though he never would have acted on it.  
  
Later, Eduardo stopped thinking that. Mark stood by looking vaguely uncomfortable when Sean was snide to him, _in the house he was fucking paying for_, and never said a word, and then proved how little trouble he had hurting Eduardo worse than anyone.

But he also supposedly told his lawyers not to use the chicken story against Eduardo when he was being sued by Eduardo. And he apparently did tell Sean off for how he spoke to Eduardo, eventually, if Sean is to be believed when he’s drowning in self-pity and sangria. And here Mark is outright saying that he got angry at Eduardo’s father on his behalf.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE:
    
    wardo?

  
  
That settles it. If Mark is somehow even slightly _worried_ about Eduardo’s reaction…  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE:
    
    When was this?
    
    --
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE:
    
    freshman year. a few weeks ago. pick a time, any time.

  
  
Eduardo frowns at the email. _What about the time you decided instead of having my back you’d stab me in the back? What about then?_  
  
How can Mark not see these contradictions?  
  

    
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE:
    
    My father and I are fine these days, or close enough.
    
    He actually made some good points about why I shouldn’t move back to Brazil.

  
  
As soon as he hits ‘send’, Eduardo regrets it. He wants to say _don’t do anything to my father, Mark, please_ without actually saying that, but discussing his family feels too intimate and now he’s hinted at his job move.  
  
There are times when Eduardo suspects his subconscious of self-sabotage.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
    
    i didn’t know you were considering moving back to brazil
    
    --
    
    To: Zuckerberg, Mark
    From: Saverin, Eduardo
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
    
    I’m not anymore.
    
    It turns out I’m not fired, I’m promoted.  The company is expanding and I’m the new VP in North America.

  
  
Eduardo consoles himself with the knowledge that Mark would have found out soon anyway. He hasn’t told Chris yet but he’s planning to, and the company isn’t keeping it quiet.  
  
Most people would congratulate him.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
    
    i told you they weren’t going to fire you.
    
    where are the offices going to be?

  
  
It seems like an innocent enough question.


	16. Chapter 16

As always, I’m so flattered by and grateful for the comments on this fic. Thank you all so much! :)  
\--  
  
Eduardo texts Dustin because he doesn’t want to deal with Chris’s questions. _Did Mark become a conversational ninja recently?_  
  
_lol, NO,_ Dustin replies. _what happened? and does it have nething to do with mark acting chipper 2day?_  
  
Chipper? _Mark_? Eduardo is about to type how unlikely he finds that, but his phone buzzes with another message.  
  
_not jk. hes scaring the interns. theres talk of google going down._  
  
Dustin texts again before Eduardo can reply: _he even said he might take some time off soon._  
  
Again: _time OFF, wardo_  
  
And again: _i think u broke him. how did u break him?_  
  
And somehow yet again, because Dustin is not human: _tell me ur secret weapon. unless its kinky, b/c EW!!!_  
  
_I got talked into visiting California again soon,_ Eduardo texts back, because hell _no_, he is not discussing that with Dustin.  
  
Dustin drags the story out of him then – how Eduardo will be moving to an American office in a few months, how he has to scout for locations and potential clients in numerous American cities, how this somehow led to an agreement to “hang out” with Mark while he’s doing so in California – and Eduardo maybe has a bit of a panic attack after.  
  
This is likely the only reason Suzana doesn’t chew him out when he tells her what he’s done. She doesn’t exactly sugarcoat her reaction, though.  
  
“So essentially you have a date with the guy who screwed you over?”  
  
“It’s not a date!” Eduardo shouts, slightly shrill.  
  
“Does Zuckerberg know that?”  
  
“Yes! He said we’d ‘hang out’. Even Mark is socially aware enough to know that’s not dating language, it’s _friendly_ language.” Eduardo bites his lip. “Chris and Dustin think that Mark wants to be friends again.”  
  
“I don’t give a fuck,” Suzana says bluntly. “And neither should you.”  
  
“Suzy. That’s not really fair.”  
  
“You’re too nice for your own good, Eduardo.”  
  
“Not always,” he murmurs, thinking of the gleam of Mark’s curls in the low light of that alleyway in New York, gripped tight in his fingers.  
  
“I didn’t say you had to be a prick to him, or to dick around with his…feelings or whatever, just that you should have the balls to say no to him.”  
  
“That was far too many metaphors involving male genitalia for one sentence. Has it been a while since you -”  
  
“Got laid?” Suzana interjects, and Eduardo accidentally tunes out her ensuing tirade, remembering the way Mark enthused _“relationship status, interested in”_ and the way he didn’t take his eyes off Eduardo when he said _“meet a girl”_ with a strange emphasis.  
  
That doesn’t mean much, Eduardo reminds himself, trying to ignore the unfurling feeling beneath his ribcage, warmth more than heat (because Eduardo has mixed feelings about Mark’s attraction to him, and because if _he_ was even the tiniest part of Mark’s inspiration for Facebook -). That happened not long after Mark’s break-up with Erica and right after he forgot they were supposed to meet yet again, and Eduardo shouldn’t feel touched, let alone something approaching giddy.  
  
_Mark was also running on no sleep for 48 hours,_ his stupid brain reminds him. _It’s a miracle he remembered to put on clothes._  
  
Which naturally leads to Eduardo picturing Mark without clothes, because apparently his mind has decided to take up residence in the gutter.  
  
“Eduardo!”  
  
He jumps. “What?”  
  
Suzana is giving him the kind of look Chris tends to direct at Dustin, and Eduardo hopes she attributes the heat in his face to embarrassment for not listening to her.  
  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to tune you out. You were talking about working too much to date?”  
  
“Nice try. You don’t…you’re not _into_ Zuckerberg, are you?”  
  
“I told you that we -”  
  
“Made a couple of mistakes which aren’t terribly surprising, considering your history of emotional issues and the apparently very long shelf life of his spank bank -”  
  
“I never thought I’d say this to anyone, ever,” Eduardo says, “but you are more horrifying to listen to than _Sean_.”  
  
Suzana ignores him. “- but there’s a difference between getting caught up in the heat of the moment and being genuinely interested in someone.”

“I know,” Eduardo says.  
  
(_Once can be written off as a mistake, a fluke, an impulsive one-off best forgotten. Twice is different._)  
  
“So are you into him or not?”  
  
“I…I think I am,” Eduardo admits, and it’s not as scary as confessing to Dr. Wu was, but then _that_ scares him, because it should be.  
  
“Well fuck,” Suzana says, which pretty much sums up the situation.  
  
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it.”  
  
“The fact that you’re not sure is what concerns me.” Suzana looks away. “We’re not always attracted to people who are good for us,” she says softly, and Eduardo thinks that the reason she seldom dates has less to do with work than it does with her ex-fiancé.  
  
Which is why he gets it, when she declares she’s flying out to California with him. He would feel just as protective if the shoe were on the other foot.  
  
Briefly, Eduardo wonders what it says about him that he equates his ex-best friend and a couple of ill-advised sex acts with an engagement. What it says about their relationship even before sex was on the table.  
  
_This is too soon,_ Eduardo thinks, and even if it’s not racing and panicked anymore, it’s no less true. Exchanging emails with Mark – it’s good, it’s comfortable, it’s as easy as anything can be between the two of them. It doesn’t seem overly intimate; it doesn’t require Eduardo to go out on a limb.  
  
Interacting in person is an infinitely more precarious and daunting prospect.  
  
“I can be your buffer,” Suzana is saying. “So you don’t end up alone with him and do something idiotic. More idiotic. Again.”  
  
“Thanks for your support,” Eduardo says wryly.  
  
“We should come up with signals too!” Suzana says, sounding far too excited. “Code words and gestures so I’ll know when you need an excuse to get away from him.”  
  
“We are not spies and Mark is not a Bond villain,” Eduardo says, a little disturbed that’s the second time he’s shot down that particular comparison in the past few weeks. “He’s too smart, for one thing, and he’s read the Evil Overlord List, for another.”  
  
(Eduardo may have a copy Mark emailed to him years ago, saved somewhere on his computer out of amusement or nostalgia or both.)  
  
“We’d make awesome spies, though,” Suzana says. “I’d be all Sydney-in-the-early-seasons-of-_Alias_, and you’d be _Chuck_!”  
  
It occurs to Eduardo that Suzana’s best act as a buffer will be just talking to Dustin; between the two of them, conversation will never move beyond pop culture references and nerd arguments.  
  
\--  
  
“Congratulations,” Chris says, holding his phone between his shoulder and his ear while he flips through resumes. “Or should I wait to say that after the relocation logistical nightmare is over?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s just started and I already wish I kept liquor in my desk like the CEO,” Eduardo groans. “If not for Ava, I’d probably be bumming vodka off him right now.”  
  
“Thank God for her then.”  
  
“Of course. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.” A pause. “Chris…you know I’m joking when I say things like that about alcohol, right?”  
  
Chris doesn’t mean to pause as well, but –  
  
(More than once, Chris argued his way into the Phoenix clubhouse past the elitist members-only douchebags to drag a hung-over or still-drunk Eduardo out of bed with some stranger and to class, or to a study group, or to some kind of social activity that didn’t involve reckless escapism.)  
  
“I know you’re joking most of the time,” he says. _And that a lot of truth is said in jest._  
  
“Pretty much always these days,” Eduardo says softly. _You don’t have to worry about me so much anymore._  
  
_Don’t I?_ “I hear you and Mark have been in touch lately.”  
  
“Um.” _Fuck, you caught me._ “Yes, we…have. Er. He started it?”  
  
Chris sets all the CVs aside and pinches the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Okay, that’s not entirely fair, actually. I guess I, um, called him first so I started it, but really -”  
  
“Just…be careful, all right?” Chris interjects. _Remember how close I am to getting an ulcer already?_  
  
“I am.” _I remember a lot more than that._  
  
Chris sighs. “Fine. But you’re not talking me out of having a…friendly chat with Mark.”  
  
“Sounds ominous.” Another pause, and then Eduardo asks, “How are _your_ relocation plans going? Or, re-relocation, I guess.”

“Well, first I have to find a replacement here, while dealing with Dustin’s attempts to undermine the efforts of course…”  
  
“Of course,” Eduardo echoes with a laugh. He keeps laughing as Chris outlines the multiple zany schemes Dustin has pulled lately trying to extend Chris’s stay in Palo Alto.  
  
“…didn’t _know_ that particular publicist has a phobia of people dressed as animals. Or so he claims. Lord knows what you can find online with hacking skills these days.”  
  
Eduardo’s laughter peters off. “He’s going to miss you, that’s all.”  
  
Chris shifts in his chair. “I – we handled it before by Skyping regularly and I visited a few times and he visited once. It’s only New York, not the other side of the world.” He rolls his eyes at himself then, because it’s his job to watch his words better than that. “Hey, maybe you and I will end up in the same city soon.”  
  
Eduardo, being Eduardo, is sympathetic enough to let the subject be changed without comment.  
  
Eduardo, being Eduardo, is so obviously sympathetic that even over the phone Chris feels a bit like he’s being pitied, even if that’s clearly not Eduardo’s intention.  
  
(He wonders idly if he makes Wardo feel the same way sometimes.)  
  
Chris starts a debate over the best pizza places in New York.  
  
\--  
  
Eduardo gets home late from work, exhausted, yet again.  
  
Checking his email is nevertheless the first thing he does after taking his shoes off, as has become routine with worrying alacrity.  
  
Tugging at his tie, Eduardo makes a mental note to reply to Anthony’s email tomorrow, ignores an invitation to a political fundraiser from another old acquaintance from the Phoenix, and clicks on the newest message from Mark. It’s a bit different from the occasional tidbits of his perspective on their friendship.  
  

    
    
    To: Wardo
    From: Mark Zuckerberg
    Subject:
    
    what did you mean when you said we “didn’t tell the whole truth” during the winklevii depositions?

  
  
Eduardo doesn’t think they should talk about depositions over email even if they aren’t their own. He needs to have this conversation with at least Mark’s tone, or lack thereof, to go by.  
  
Besides, he’ll be back in California again soon; it’s not as if it could all be casual nerd banter forever.  
  
“Facebook was your idea, not theirs,” Eduardo says into the phone right out the gate. “They came to you with an idea; you had a better one. Fine. But you did intentionally mislead them, Mark.”  
  
Mark doesn’t miss a beat, and he sounds more derisive than defensive. “Did I sign a contract with them saying I’d work exclusively on their lame project?”  
  
“Don’t give me the run-around, please; I am not their lawyer. All those emails between you…” Eduardo breaks off – his tone is too heated, bordering on hurt, because even then Mark was keeping things from him. He takes a deep breath and continues more calmly. “You felt that they slighted you, so you retaliated.”  
  
“Yes,” Mark agrees baldly. “But that wasn’t the whole reason, Wardo.”  
  
“Care to enlighten me?” Eduardo asks, careful to keep his tone curious and clear of anything that could be interpreted as sarcastic or accusing.  
  
“In the U.S., intellectual property is first to invent not first to file, but internationally, it’s vice versa -”  
  
“I’m familiar with the fundamentals of IP law -”  
  
“Then you know I had to get my foot in the door first or the Winklevii would have used daddy’s lawyers to bury us before we could get to two continents.”  
  
“I think you’re exaggerating the risk, Mark.”  
  
“I was trying to _minimize_ the risk while Facebook was in its nascent, fragile stages, Wardo.”  
  
“And yet you told me the cease-and-desist letter wasn’t a ‘big deal’.”  
  
“Because it _wasn’t_,” Mark says, and he still sounds confident instead of defensive, but there’s no dismissiveness in his voice either. His answers are not implying that Eduardo’s questions are stupid; they’re just definitive. Sure. “It wasn’t their idea _and_ we got there first – potential problem averted.”  
  
That’s the second time Mark has implicitly acknowledged Eduardo’s involvement. Bury _us. We_ got there first. Mark is usually more careful, more cutting, with his choice of pronouns.  
  
Or he used to be, anyway.

“In any case,” Eduardo says, “you jerked them around for a long time, and maybe you had practical reasons for doing so – though I still think you overestimated the potential threat to Facebook – but it was still wrong. And I don’t think you would have been quite that unnecessarily cruel if you didn’t want to get back at them. Excuse me for feeling a little uncomfortable with becoming an accessory to the whole thing.”  
  
There’s a long pause. Eduardo feels abruptly exposed, like if they were playing poker he just tipped his hand.  
  
“You -” Mark says. “You defended me at their depositions, you – why did you do that?”  
  
There are a lot of answers to that question. Eduardo was under oath. He felt some compassion for Cameron, Tyler and Divya, but he also thought they didn’t deserve even the smallest fraction of Facebook and didn’t like the way they tried to get it. He wasn’t going to let his own anger at Mark compromise his sense of right and wrong.  
  
And.  
  
“I thought you deserved to be defended,” Eduardo says.  
  
He can hear Mark inhale – sharp, shaky.  
  
Eduardo shuts his eyes, fights (hates) the sting behind them. _I always felt that way, Mark, why didn’t you feel the same way about me?_  
  
“Wardo -”  
  
“Why do you ask, by the way?” Eduardo grits out. For a moment he thinks Mark will call him on contradicting himself, on cutting Mark off when he’s the one who asked him to _say things_.  
  
(_“I want you to understand what it is you’re afraid of,”_ Dr. Wu said. So what is he afraid of here?)  
  
But Mark simply says, “You’re friends with one of the Winklevii on Facebook.”  
  
“Cameron friend requested me, he’s a decent guy, really, and I didn’t want to be rude. We don’t actually talk.”  
  
“I know. You don’t use your Facebook much anyway.”  
  
Eduardo frowns. “Have you been…checking up on me through Facebook or something?”  
  
“It’s not stalking,” Mark snaps.  
  
“…I didn’t say it was.”  
  
“You never unfriended me.” There’s a question there, Mark’s typical implications.  
  
Eduardo could tell Mark that it was only because he didn’t know how to remove someone from his friends list all those years ago, and then because he didn’t want to be petty. Instead, he points out, “You didn’t either.”  
  
“Well, I – I could see your status updates, as infrequently as you make them, but I didn’t, like, look at your profile or anything. Not until after you phoned me.”  
  
Eduardo isn’t sure if he’s hearing this right. “Mark, you don’t even need to be on my friends list to see my Facebook.”  
  
“As the creator of Facebook, how shocking,” Mark deadpans. “But you wouldn’t – you didn’t want – I was – symbolic embargoes and -”  
  
Eduardo rubs a hand across his forehead. “Mark. Did it ever occur to you that maybe _you_ should have made the first move if you wanted to – to get in touch again?”  
  
“No.” Mark sounds genuinely bewildered. “Wardo, you made it really clear you didn’t want to speak to me. Was I just supposed to ignore that? Also, technically, I _did_ make the first move. Not intentionally or…ideally, but. It still counts.”  
  
At this point, Eduardo’s tempted to laugh at all the crossed wires between them. Maybe because they’re (finally) untangling them.  
  
“So the minute the ‘embargo’ ended, you decided to Facebook-stalk me?” Eduardo asks mischievously.  
  
“_No_,” Mark says, heated, and rants about not forcing anyone to sign up and it not being his responsibility if people are careless with personal information and privacy settings and the media’s alleged efforts to paint him as an Orwellian supervillain.  
  
Eduardo is laughing by then, so he doesn’t immediately catch Mark switching gears, saying, “Besides, I’ve always been very careful about. That.”  
  
“Hmm, what?”  
  
“About, you know. You. With the not-stalking.”  
  
“You’re going to have to clarify that for me, Mark, and not even because you went Whedon in your dialogue.”  
  
“God, Dustin is a terrible influence.”  
  
“_Mark_.”

“I wasn’t, like, creepy about you or anything, despite what you might think. That’s. I wasn’t. Sometimes you fell asleep in my – in my dorm, yes, but I didn’t…I mean, you slept like the dead, Wardo, so maybe I occasionally glanced over to see that you were still breathing, and – and you were in my peripheral vision sometimes, it’s not like I was _Edward Cullen_, I -”  
  
Mark cuts himself off, and Eduardo knows somehow that he’s wincing, berating himself in his head.  
  
“You know I didn’t mean a lot of what I said when – that time, in New York?” Eduardo asks gently. “I was angry. I don’t really think – I’ve admittedly had a poor opinion of you at times, but I’ve never thought you were…creepy. Or, um, pathetic. Not _ever_, Mark.”  
  
Mark scoffs, like he can’t help himself. “You’re doing it right now, Eduardo, _pitying_ me -”  
  
“I don’t pity you and I never have. You don’t need it.”  
  
For a few moments, Mark just breathes into the phone. Then he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I don’t – I don’t pity you for the same reason. You – you’re a lot stronger than people give you credit for, Wardo. Than you give yourself credit for.”  
  
“Thanks,” Eduardo says, soft, hoarse.  
  
He wants to tell Mark that he has nothing to be embarrassed (almost ashamed) of. Rare glimpses of Mark’s insecurities have always made Eduardo feel fiercely protective, and maybe that’s not – not as terrible as he used to think it was?  
  
On the other hand, he kind of wants to offer extra reassurance to Mark by telling him that what he – that his – that it’s not one-sided anymore. That he can look at Eduardo’s Facebook all he likes, that he can look at _Eduardo_ all he likes, that it isn’t creepy in the least, it’s _hot_, and that he’s jerked off imagining Mark’s gaze on him more than once. That he’d like to do it again, over the phone listening to Mark touch himself too; in person.  
  
All of which is _definitely_ a terrible idea.  
  
Eduardo clears his throat. “Since we’re talking about the Winklevosses…was there a reason you said so little about them to me, at the time?”  
  
Because Mark reacted with scorn at Gretchen’s suggestion that he’d been plotting against Eduardo when Facebook still had the ‘the’, and although it does seem like a convoluted conspiracy theory, Eduardo has wondered sometimes. Wondered why Mark was keeping secrets from him even then if he really did consider him his best friend, if there really was no scheming behind his back yet.  
  
“Because it wasn’t a big deal, like I said.”  
  
“Any other reasons?”  
  
Mark pauses, because Mark is far from stupid, he has to remember and to know where Eduardo is going with this. Eduardo braces himself for something acerbic or argumentative, but Mark says, “Because you would have reacted the same way you did when you found out later. You would have told me it was wrong, I shouldn’t get so offended about the bike room thing, you were sure they meant nothing by it, and then you’d remember the Phoenix and trip over yourself trying not to offend me about _that_ and, really, Wardo, I just wanted to skip the sermon and the fight, okay?”  
  
Huh. That’s…sort of awful, yet entirely typical. Very Mark. Who used to give him bland looks and dull “I know, Wardo”s when Eduardo would try to tell him he couldn’t just _do_ some of the things he did, from insulting belligerent frat boys in front of their girlfriends to crashing Harvard’s server. Unaffected, but…indulgent.  
  
“Okay,” Eduardo says.  
  
The silence on the other hand tells him he probably managed to surprise Mark too, with his low-key reaction.  
  
“Okay,” Mark finally says. “Okay then. You haven’t sent me your flight details yet.”  
  
“I’ll email you, Chris and Dustin when Suzana and I know for sure.”  
  
“…Suzana?”  
  
“Yeah, she’s taking some vacation time before her next business trip.”  
  
“Oh. That’s – I thought – um. Okay.”  
  
“You know, I have to admit something you said earlier concerns me,” Eduardo says. “Why do you know the name of the guy from _Twilight_?”  
  
“_Dustin_,” Mark says darkly. “Also, I have a regrettable number of sisters.”  
  
“Excuses, excuses…”


	17. Chapter 17

Dustin invites Eduardo and his new BFF over his place for dinner after they’ve arrived in California and settled in. Partly because he figures Wardo is no longer just appeasing Mark if he’s been voluntarily talking to him for a while now. Partly to make up for upsetting him about that waitress (though how _he_ ended up the bad guy there is beyond him – he even did a bit of snooping to make sure Mark didn’t, like, sic Immigration on her or something). Partly to provide something like insulation for Mark meeting Suzana. It’s basically the best plan ever.  
  
“This is basically the worst plan ever,” says Chris. “Eduardo and Mark might not be nearly as good at maintaining this détente if forced into close proximity along with someone who Mark is going to hate on principle and who probably hates him right back.”  
  
“Chris, they’ve clearly gotten past the détente phase while no one was looking -”  
  
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Chris mutters.  
  
“- and Mark is going to have to meet the dreaded Suzana eventually. Isn’t it better if other people are there to prevent too much bloodshed?”  
  
“But did it have to be at your house? Wardo wasn’t all that comfortable hanging out there before. Also, in a public place, there would be less risk of any sort of…_scene_.”  
  
“Did you not _hear_ the Brazilian restaurant story?” Dustin asks incredulously. “The one where a hot waitress – who was both Asian and Brazilian, let me remind you – flirted with Wardo in front of Mark? Believe me, he didn’t care at all if he caused a scene.”  
  
“Not _Mark_ – I have _met_ Mark, you know – Eduardo, _he_ won’t cause a scene,” Chris says. “No matter what Mark says, Wardo will keep things civil in public. In private, though…if Mark gets aggressive with Suzana…”  
  
“Oh, but he won’t. He knows how Wardo would react. He’ll get _passive-aggressive_ instead.”  
  
Chris gives him one of his patented you-are-insane-and-yet-I-put-up-with-you looks. “Dustin, I think Wardo is familiar with Mark’s passive-aggressive tendencies.”  
  
“Chris,” Dustin says seriously, “Wardo is familiar with the worst of them and yet he can see that Mark is genuinely trying to rebuild their friendship here. Why can’t you?”  
  
“Because _I_ had to see the effect of Mark’s betrayal on Wardo firsthand, remember?” Chris says, and his voice is soft but scalding all the same, making Dustin wince. “While Mark buried himself so far in computers he might as well have _been one_ and you took the whole ‘ignorance is bliss’ thing to new levels, I was at Harvard. Eduardo was a _mess_; there were times I was genuinely afraid he would never… And he is better, now, but he still has trust and intimacy issues, and – excuse me if I’m a little wary of Eduardo opening himself up to Mark again.”  
  
“Okay, Chris, I get it -”  
  
“Don’t try to placate me -”  
  
“I’m _not_. You think I don’t get it? Mark is just hoping that he can get Eduardo’s friendship back and be a better friend than he was before, even if it means attending Wardo’s fucking _wedding_ someday. So I’m a little wary too, Chris. But how would I be helping if I kept reminding Mark of all the mistakes the two of them made and discouraging them from finally working their shit out? How?”  
  
Chris sighs and closes his eyes, looking unexpectedly young and vulnerable for a moment. In that moment, Dustin feels more protective of him than of Mark or Eduardo, because he can admit that he made some mistakes and certainly Mark and Eduardo both did, but Chris has done nothing but try his best to be supportive of all of them, and suffered because he’s human instead of perfect.  
  
“It’s not that I don’t want them to work things out, Dustin,” Chris says, opening his eyes. He looks tired. “And really, I know that Eduardo isn’t as…vulnerable…as he used to be, now. I know that, intellectually. Just like I know that the level of effort Mark has put into all this proves he cares, and that he’s putting himself out there too. But how can I not worry?”  
  
“You can’t. But you can worry and hope at the same time, can’t you?”  
  
That draws a small smile out of Chris. “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Practically the motto of political campaign staff.”

“Exactly,” Dustin says, and then, more brightly, “Which is why I invited you to dinner with our under-the-delusion-we-live-in-a-soap-opera friends.” The description derails his train of thought, because now that he thinks about it… “Eduardo could be in a soap opera. The drama, the prettiness, the wealthy and dysfunctional family. The _hair_. He would fit right in on _Days of Our Lives_! Um. Not that I watch that. It was totally hypothetical.”  
  
Chris raises one eyebrow. He denies any Spock impersonation, but Dustin is not fooled.  
  
“Stop eyebrowing me, dude, I had the flu!” Dustin had to stay home for a week, no one visited (because Chris was in accursed Manhattan and Mark banned any Facebook personnel crucial to the updates they were running then from ‘risking contamination’), and _Oprah_ was only on for one hour a day.  
  
Chris is trying not to laugh, Dustin _knows_. “And your solution was to start following _Days of Our Lives_ and _Young and the Restless_?”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dustin says, rolling his eyes. “Y&R is just great TV, Chris.”  
  
“_Anyway_,” Chris says pointedly. “Why did you invite me to this dinner of doom?”  
  
“To be the sane one who prevents anything from getting truly out of hand, naturally.”  
  
“And to cook, I presume.”  
  
“Unless we want everybody to get poisoned, yeah.”  
  
Chris looks like he’s considering that as a potential solution to all his problems for a moment, before shaking his head. “Fine, but I want it noted for the record that this is a bad idea.”  
  
“Noted. But there’s really no need to worry – this is one of the only occasions where Mark’s going to have to play nice!”  
  
Dustin is excited. It’ll be like watching a dog stumble around on its hind legs.  
  
“Mark. Playing nice.” Chris pats his jacket. “Where did I put my Pepto-Bismol…?”  
  
\--  
  
Oh God, this is even worse than with the waitress.  
  
(Not that this, Dustin thinks, in any way justifies Chris mouthing “I told you so” at him.)  
  
Suzana is seriously hot, for one thing. She and Wardo, like, _match_ – they’re both tall and slim, tanned and dark-haired, impossibly well-dressed. They look like they spilled out of a Versace ad.  
  
_Do they put something into the water in Brazil?_ Dustin wonders. _And, if so, how can I get some?_  
  
The close friendship between them is painfully obvious too, which may be worse than the whole ridiculously good-looking thing. Eduardo treats Suzana the way he used to treat them, and it highlights the differences that weren’t so apparent before, that were nearly invisible until thrown into contrast. Dustin is abruptly made aware of how Eduardo – openly, earnestly affectionate Eduardo – hasn’t given him a friendly shoulder tap or fist-bump or anything besides a polite handshake in years; how even with Chris, there seems to be nothing more tactile than a half-hug of we-haven’t-seen-each-other-in-six-months-hi-man.  
  
Eduardo and Suzana walk side-by-side, his hand on her back or hers tucked into his elbow. They sit on Dustin’s couch close enough that their knees bump. She fixes his collar, for once not held with a tie; he plucks a stray stand of hair off her arm. He bumps his hip against hers when sharing an anecdote; she leans her head on his shoulder when yawning and apologizing for her jet lag-induced behaviour.  
  
Mark is eerily quiet.  
  
“Mix your own drinks, bitches,” Chris yells from the kitchen, because he’s already mixed many of his own to make it through this evening (Chris always was the sensible one). “I’m the chef, not the bartender.”  
  
“You’re neither,” Eduardo reminds him with a laugh, heading to the bar.  
  
Leaving Dustin, Mark and Suzana alone. ‘Cause that’s not awkward _at all_.  
  
Suzana actually looks completely comfortable, bordering on amused, which just makes Dustin fear for his life. “So,” she says, smiling at Mark, all teeth, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”  
  
Yep. _Definitely_ fearing for his life here.

“Funny,” Mark says flatly, “I’ve heard almost nothing about you.”  
  
Suzana is unfazed. “I wouldn’t expect otherwise. Eduardo doesn’t care to discuss personal matters with business colleagues. It’s something his pai taught him.”  
  
“He’s talked about his father with you?” Mark asks, and then looks like he regrets it, like he knows he’s walked into a trap.  
  
“Of course,” Suzana says easily, pleasantly. “But I’ve also met his parents.”  
  
Dustin tries really hard not to squeak like a mouse caught between two cats.  
  
Mark’s eyes narrow and go impossibly colder. “I bet they just _loved_ you,” he says, in a tone which implies this is equivalent to having Nazis for fanboys.  
  
“They did. As much as I don’t care for them, it’s nice to know I’m not yet another sore point between Eduardo and his father.”  
  
Dustin shoots a terrified glance at Mark, and is surprised to see Mark looking smug instead of stung.  
  
“I feel the same way,” he says, in a tone of I-know-something-you-don’t-know.  
  
Suzana’s smile doesn’t fade, but it sharpens. “It’s so much better when certain sentiments are _shared_ rather than one-sided, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
Good _Lord_, Dustin is going to _die_. Where the fuck is Chris?!  
  
Mark blinks at Suzana but recovers quickly, and Dustin can actually _see_ him getting ready to attack, no holding back this time.  
  
But Eduardo returns, and Mark’s mouth shuts with a click. He looks _livid_.  
  
“You’re out of gin, Dustin, sorry,” says Eduardo, handing Suzana a drink and sitting down next to her.  
  
“Oh – oh – okay,” Dustin stammers.  
  
Eduardo looks at him funny, but then seems to notice the awkwardness-saturated air in the room. He looks at Mark, but Mark is glancing between the drink in Suzana’s hand to the one in Eduardo’s hand to his own empty hands with an expression Dustin can’t decipher but finds painful to look at.  
  
“Oh,” Eduardo says uneasily. “I, uh, forgot my manners there. Mark, Dustin, did you guys want drinks?”  
  
“Dustin is the host, he should be getting drinks,” Chris calls out.  
  
It figures Chris can scold Dustin and provide him with an escape hatch at the same time.  
  
“It’s fine,” Eduardo is saying, but Dustin leaps up with a “sit down, Wardo” while Suzana puts a hand on his thigh to push him back down saying, “You should be relaxing after that hellish flight.”  
  
“By sitting down for even more time?” Eduardo asks skeptically.  
  
“Mark, you okay with a screwdriver?” Dustin asks, almost doing a facsimile of the I-have-to-pee dance in his desperation to escape.  
  
Mark is glaring at Suzana’s hand, still on Eduardo’s thigh. “No. Get me a Beck’s.”  
  
Before Dustin can flee the room, he glimpses Eduardo pause in his lecture about traveller’s thrombosis to glance at Mark, and then at his and Suzana’s drinks, and then at the floor.  
  
Dustin doesn’t know what that’s all about and he doesn’t want to. He escapes to his bar, and if people want to claim it takes him thrice as long as it should to grab two beers, it’s not like they have proof.  
  
When he gets back, Eduardo and Suzana are regaling Mark with a story about haggling in a Sunday market in Kashgar. Mark appears supremely bored until Eduardo talks about a chicken getting loose and ruining the carpet from Hotan he’d just purchased, which makes Mark smirk.  
  
“They have a vendetta against you, Wardo. This is proof.”  
  
“What, like my life is a cross between _The Birds_ and _I Know What You Did However Many Summers Ago_?” Eduardo shoots back, grinning.  
  
Suzana is glancing between them with a faint frown. “What -”  
  
“It’s an inside joke,” Mark says. Then, without even trying to sound sincere: “Sorry.”  
  
“Oh, don’t be,” she says. “I’m sure _Wardo_ will fill me in.”  
  
Eduardo shoots her a puzzled look, and thus misses the way Mark glares at Suzana like he wishes he could channel River Tam and kill her with his brain.  
  
Suzana raises both eyebrows at Mark, and the look she gives him doesn’t ask _what?_ so much as it asks _what are you going to do about it, bitch?  
  
Oh dear God,_ Dustin thinks.  
  
“Oh dear God,” Chris mutters from the doorway.

“Did you need help in there, Chris?” Eduardo asks, obliging and oblivious guy that he is.  
  
“Not from you,” Chris says cheerfully, and returns to the kitchen.  
  
“So he’s still a mean drunk, I see,” Eduardo notes with amusement.  
  
“That or he’s sampled some of your cooking,” Suzana says.  
  
“Suzy, please. If you didn’t mooch off me, you’d have starved to death long ago.”  
  
“Okay, that’s sort of true. It’s only when you try to make something fancy that things get all stinky and burnt and botulistic.”  
  
“The adjective you’re looking for is _botulinal_,” Mark corrects in his God-what-an-idiot tone.  
  
“Excuse me, I am extremely careful and clean when I cook,” Eduardo says. “Especially with meat.”  
  
“Of course,” Mark says dryly. “You’d _never_ do anything inappropriate with meat. Never break a law of nature.”  
  
“Fish eat other fish,” Eduardo insists, but he looks less like he’s trying not to freak out than he is trying not to laugh.  
  
“But do marlin eat trout?”  
  
“Trout eat marlin for breakfast.”  
  
“What the _hell_ are they talking about?” Suzana asks Dustin, and he shrugs, sipping his beer. He’s never understood what fish had to do with the chicken thing.  
  
“Trout are too small and not piranhas, Wardo.”  
  
“I’ve actually seen piranhas, and their reputation is not really accurate, it’s built way too much on -”  
  
“- Roosevelt’s account of Brazil, I know, not to mention -”  
  
“- the _James Bond_ movie with one of the more elaborate death devices, naturally, since the villain was -”  
  
“- Blofeld, the most infamous of them all. And you didn’t grow up in the _Amazon_, Wardo; the only place you’ve seen piranhas is the zoo.”  
  
“True. I did see a wandering spider once, though. My father freaked the fuck out at me for going near one, as if I did it on purpose. You come across one of those things and other spiders just aren’t frightening. _Dustin_.”  
  
“I maintain,” Dustin says with great dignity, “that the _creature_ in the shower that one time was the unholy spawn of Shelob and Cthulhu.”  
  
Dustin doesn’t care what Wardo or Mark say, that thing _was_ trying to kill him. Besides, it’s not like their opinions at the time were relevant or non-insane – Mark just bitched about being interrupted when Dustin shrieked (er…_called_, in a manly, badass way) and Wardo _picked the thing up_ and let it out the window instead of slaying it like the hellbeast it was.  
  
“No talking about bugs, we’re about to eat!” Chris snaps.  
  
“He turns gayer when he’s drunk too, apparently,” Mark comments and Eduardo laughs.  
  
Dustin throws a pillow at Mark, because pointing out how much gayer Mark gets in proximity to Eduardo (and likewise, though Wardo’s is also obvious in proximity to haute couture and hair product) would not help. “_Rude_.”  
  
“_Accurate_.”  
  
“That’s always your excuse for being rude.”  
  
“Mark makes excuses for being rude?” Eduardo asks with teasing incredulity.  
  
“No, you’re right,” Dustin sighs. “There are no excuses made. Mark is excuseless.”  
  
Mark shrugs. “Excuses and apologies are for people who are wrong.”  
  
The smile drops off Eduardo’s face like it was hurled over a bridge with concrete feet, and Dustin closes his eyes, doesn’t want to look, to remember.  
  
(_“It’ll be like I’m not a part of Facebook anymore…”_)  
  
“Eduardo?” Suzana’s voice is soft.  
  
“I, um, I’m going to get us refills.”  
  
Dustin opens his eyes and watches Mark watch Eduardo’s retreating back before his gaze wanders to the window and he downs his beer.  
  
Suzana is looking at Mark like he’s an insect she’d like to squish beneath her five-inch heels. Her mouth twists, and she turns to face Dustin. “So, were you a fan of LOTR before or after the movies?”  
  
“_Before_,” Dustin declares, with less outrage than the matter deserves because she kind of scares him. “I first read the books when I was nine…”

It’s nice, having Suzana here with him. Eduardo feels…safer, he supposes, like he has back-up, or something slightly less ridiculous-sounding.  
  
Chris and Suzana get along well, Dustin is mysteriously intimidated by her but friendly enough, and Mark…  
  
Eduardo isn’t sure what to make of Mark’s behaviour. He hasn’t said anything cruel or cutting or even rude to Suzana, and yet his dislike is palpable. Suzana expresses her own dislike with passive-aggressive politeness, and Mark responds in turn, except he’s clearly not used to disguising his disdain or holding back his vitriol.  
  
(“It’s a little like watching a modern adaptation of a Wilde play,” Eduardo confesses to Chris one day.  
  
Chris snorts. “Complete with the homoerotic subtext, too.”)  
  
The fact that Mark is restraining himself seemingly for Eduardo’s benefit (because as absurd as that seems, there is absolutely no other reason Eduardo can think of, no other plausible motive for Mark to blunt the edge of his tongue when he _never_ does that) is…flattering, thrilling, makes him feel embarrassingly giddy and grateful. Every time he sees Mark bite his tongue, quite possibly literally, Eduardo wants to hug him and grin like the sap that he apparently is. And suck said tongue into his mouth while he’s at it.  
  
But he’s not sure why Mark feels such strong antipathy towards Suzana. Maybe because she makes it tacitly clear she holds Mark’s history with Eduardo against him? Except Mark is generally indifferent to being disliked.  
  
Maybe because Mark is jealous? Except Eduardo and Suzana are patently platonic; Eduardo treats her like one of the guys and he wouldn’t have participated in blowjobs and hand jobs with Mark if he was dating someone else, obviously.  
  
Maybe because Mark just can’t stop himself from snapping back, even if it’s to a lesser degree than normal, when he feels slighted? That explanation feels accurate but insufficient.  
  
In any case, it’s all so much easier, so much better, than he feared that Eduardo maybe lets his guard down a bit more than he intended to.  
  
“What do you mean, ‘he’s coming’?” Suzana demands.  
  
“Mark sort of, um, invited himself along when I told him we were going to check out potential office spaces,” Eduardo confesses. “Or…got me to invite him. Somehow. I don’t know, it was like a magic trick.”  
  
“You couldn’t just say no?”  
  
“That would’ve been rude. And mean.”  
  
And he’s in meetings with potential clients all day tomorrow, so he won’t get to see Mark at all.  
  
“Eduardo, it’s _you_, you could find a way to make ‘fuck off and die’ sound polite. You clearly have a problem telling Zuckerberg no.”  
  
That’s…true, but not quite as true as Eduardo would have once said it was. As much as he sometimes thought of himself as a doormat when it came to Mark back in the day, it’s not a completely accurate description. He gave into Mark a lot of the time, but not always.  
  
Which means that, on some level, he wants Mark to come along.  
  
Kind of unsurprising, at his point.  
  
Suzana doesn’t get a chance to bitch at him any longer, as Mark walks into the hotel bar, his eyes immediately finding Eduardo.  
  
(And it’s like a punch to the gut, the way Eduardo’s breathing stutters and something twists in his stomach, the same as when he stepped into Dustin’s foyer yesterday and his eyes found Mark’s like they were magnetized, and Suzana had to elbow him in the stomach to make him remember his manners and introduce her.)  
  
Mark doesn’t look away as he walks over to meet them.  
  
\--  
So, yeah, you’re probably wanting to cyber-stone Suzana to death. Just keep in mind that she’s overprotective of Eduardo and not friends with Mark, because it’s going to get worse.  
  
…a thing for jealous!Mark? _Me_? Pssh…  
  
The Brazilian wandering spider, or armed spider, is a highly venomous and aggressive spider known to hide in dark, moist places and generally considered one of the, if not _the_, deadliest spider in the world. Eeep.


	18. Chapter 18

I am _loving_ the different opinions on Suzana here. Naturally, my own opinion fluctuates depending on whose POV I’m trying to think in at the moment.  
  
Thank you so much for reading! :)  
\--  
  
“I don’t think my car is big enough to comfortably fit three people,” Mark announces.  
  
“You should lend it to Eduardo then,” Suzana suggests sweetly. “That way, the two of us can go, and not be such an imposition on you.”  
  
Mark glances at her, eyes cold. “_Eduardo_ isn’t an imposition.”  
  
“That’s kind of you, Mark,” says Suzana, “but you know Eduardo feels guilty over anything vaguely resembling impoliteness.”  
  
“And _taking_ my car after I drove to his hotel to meet him would be less of an imposition than accepting my _offer_ to accompany him somewhere?”  
  
“We can all fit in Mark’s car just fine,” Eduardo says before either of them can really get going. “I’ll sit in the back -”  
  
“No,” Mark says while Suzana says, “Thanks.”  
  
She ends up riding shotgun in Mark’s hybrid while Eduardo tries to work his legs like an accordion in the backseat and Mark talks exclusively to him.  
  
“Why this neighbourhood, Wardo? You haven’t been listening to Sean, have you?”  
  
Eduardo snorts. “No. The company has been researching long in advance, and we developed an algorithm based on variables such as clients, potential clients, competitors, hotspots for high-tech and bio-tech R&D, economic forecasts…” He and Aqil may or may not have been inspired by an episode of NUMB3RS. “And we’re in touch with a few real estate firms as well.”  
  
Mark asks for more details about the algorithm, which is a little odd. Mark can follow complex math, but his interest in it tends to be limited to its applicability to CS. Though they had gotten into rambling, drunken debates about game theory more than once in college.  
  
Then Suzana chips in, her major being pure mathematics before she got her MBA, and Mark loses all interest in the topic. Presumably because Suzana has moved the conversation to math that Mark wouldn’t use in code and thus knows little or nothing about. Mark never did enjoy not knowing something.  
  
Eduardo remembers that with more fondness than he expects to. For all that Mark could get irritable and defensive when others knew something he didn’t, he could also get intensely focused on learning. If Eduardo used a certain strategy to win at chess, by their next match, Mark would know the strategy – as well as its history, use in pro tournaments, relative efficacy against other tactics, and how to write the code for it in a chess program. If Eduardo muttered something in Portuguese, it wouldn’t take long for Mark to know what he said – in English, French and Ancient Greek.  
  
And now, Eduardo can’t help but wonder if all of that wasn’t only Mark’s dislike of not knowing something. If maybe some of it was a little to do with him?  
  
He feels stupid, self-important, for even thinking it, but – chess and Portuguese and math, there’s a pattern there, right? Mark used to complain about Erica’s “fixation” on art and never put any effort into learning about an interest of hers any further than was necessary to pass his despised art history class. Mark would never feign interest in the politics Chris is so passionate about, scoffs at the pop culture preoccupations of Dustin’s that he doesn’t share.  
  
Whereas Mark had a lukewarm opinion of chess and played with Eduardo from time to time. And he debated math with him, and looked up Portuguese he used.  
  
On the other hand, Mark never expressed interest in or respect for economics (Eduardo’s major, but not his passion) and was almost disturbingly indifferent to the weather (though he did stay up to watch a storm with Eduardo once, even if it was only because the power was out and his laptop battery was dead). And math is useful in coding, and chess is a stereotypical smart person’s game, and Mark is good with languages. None of it might be attributable to Mark’s…whatever…for Eduardo at all.  
  
But maybe some of it. Maybe just a bit. Maybe, just maybe, Eduardo’s interest in something was enough to make Mark consider that something might be worthy of a little of his attention?

“Wardo?”  
  
Eduardo shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts and be a normal, non-daydreaming, participating-in-conversation person. “Sorry, are we almost there?”  
  
“What, are you a child and we’re your parents?” Suzana asks, and her tone is joking but the look she throws over her shoulder is knowing, warning.  
  
“First of all, that’s incredibly creepy. Second, it’s ‘are we there yet?’. At least get your American stereotypes right, Suzy.”  
  
“We’re Brazilians who live in Singapore, Eduardo.”  
  
“I grew up here, though, I didn’t just move here temporarily for my education.” Eduardo pauses, takes in Mark’s slight but unmistakable scowl in the rearview mirror. “That is, if you can call a degree from Columbia an education.”  
  
Suzana gasps in outrage, and Eduardo watches the reflection of Mark’s mouth quirk up in amusement. “You’re just jealous I have a degree over you,” she accuses.  
  
“From _Columbia_,” Eduardo repeats, and watches Mark smirk.  
  
“Whatever, you uneducated child.”  
  
“Now, now, just because you’re older than me doesn’t make me a child.”  
  
“She’s a Columbia alum _and_ older than us?” Mark asks, meeting Eduardo’s eyes in the rearview mirror.  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“I’m barely two years older than you, Eduardo,” Suzana gripes. “_Two years_.”  
  
“Which would make you -” Mark starts, but Eduardo interrupts with a loud, overly exuberant “we’re here!” lest Mark make an old maid reference and get them both murdered.  
  
They climb out of the car and Eduardo stretches. Mark and Suzana both sort of hover by him, on either side and slightly too close, but at least it’s not completely weird and awkward once Suzana says, “Again, with the childish exclamations, Eduardo.”  
  
“Well, you _could_ pull off being a stereotypical Jewish mother.”  
  
Suzana rolls her eyes heavenward. “Your mother is nothing like that.”  
  
“No, but she claims it’s because her mother is and she never wanted to become like her.”  
  
“Her and every other woman in the world.”  
  
“You’re not Jewish either, are you?” Mark asks abruptly.  
  
Eduardo, puzzled, thinks _“either”?_ and Suzana says, “No, lapsed Catholic.”  
  
Mark looks inexplicably pleased by this.  
  
He is also surprisingly approving of all the locations they inspect, except for the one without wi-fi already set up, which to Mark is the cardinal sin of geography. He is less snippy with Suzana, but that only means he ignores her completely.  
  
It makes Eduardo a bit uncomfortable, though he can’t put his finger on why. Mark pays little attention to most people. His behaviour isn’t atypical, really. It’s not unfamiliar, and yet – maybe that’s why Eduardo is feeling off-balance? Because he can remember Mark talking around Christy when she would sit between them, generally ignoring her input even when she was backing him up about Sean and stupid fishing metaphors, and this feels sort of like that.  
  
Except he and Mark are not fighting now, and Suzana wouldn’t agree with Mark on the sum of 2 + 2 as a matter of principle.  
  
“I’d have to double-check with our feng shui consultant,” Eduardo says, studying the building in a nice section of San Jose, “but I think this place is out.”  
  
“Feng shui,” Mark repeats, eyebrows raised.  
  
“Company policy. I’ve been given a lot of decision-making power for the North American offices, but not carte blanche.”  
  
“You could have it, though,” Suzana muses.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Eduardo, they’re so desperate not to lose you, and clients with you, for their homophobic bull shit that they’ll do a lot to keep you happy. You should ask for more money.”  
  
Eduardo rolls his eyes. “I would be a costly fire, that’s true, but let’s not exaggerate. And I don’t need more money.”  
  
“Technically, you don’t _need_ to work at all. They should be paying you for all the free investment advice you give to half the employees too.”  
  
“That’s not part of my job. I just happen to discuss the stock market with my colleagues sometimes.”  
  
“Which you could make your job if you wanted to.”

“Suzy, I invest well because of a combination of extensive reading of everything to do with the stock market, a basic understanding of probability theory, and a little luck. It’s really not a big deal.”  
  
Suzana gives him a look that’s a little sad, almost pitying, and Mark gives him one like he’s insane. Neither of which make any sense, considering that Eduardo was being truthful and nearly quoting Mark’s general opinion of investing.  
  
“Most economists couldn’t predict the crack spread to a large profit from watching the weather channel, ever, and certainly not when they were still in college,” Mark says. “Most people who haven’t majored in pure math or risk management are not experts in probability theory; they’re idiots who don’t comprehend the answer to the Monty Hall problem. And at this point, your success at investing can’t be attributed to mere statistics; ergo, it’s not ‘luck’.”  
  
Eduardo can’t help it – he gapes. Other than _holy shit, holy shit_, the only thing he can think is _Mark must really want to get laid if he’s openly complimenting me about _investment_, of all things._  
  
“But,” Mark goes on, in that same impassive tone, like this isn’t unprecedented and possibly a sign that there are airborne pigs somewhere and flurries in hell, “you don’t find investing all that appealing aside from the challenge. You want your work to mean something, to create and build something, not just to make money.”  
  
Eduardo manages to stop gawking like an idiot, but he still has no idea how to react and ends up just staring at Mark.  
  
Mark realizes belatedly that he’s shocked Eduardo into this state, and stares right back.  
  
(Eduardo thinks of how they stared at each other in his hotel room, of how having Mark’s eyes on him, being the sole focus of that formidable mind, makes the temperature around them skyrocket and Eduardo’s skin tingle and his stomach do cartwheels and –)  
  
“…anyway,” Suzana says awkwardly. “You’re not a hundred percent sure one of the offices is going to be here at all, so you don’t have to start thinking about the recommendations you’ll make to the Board just yet.”  
  
“Of course one of them has to be here, or close to,” Mark argues without looking away from Eduardo. “It’s Silicon Valley.”  
  
“There are no guarantees. And even if an office does end up here, Eduardo doesn’t have to make it his home base, does he?”  
  
Mark’s eyes remain on Eduardo’s, but they flicker at Suzana’s remark. “No,” he says softly. “No, he doesn’t have to.”  
  
Eduardo swallows and looks away. “Let’s, um, stop for coffee or something. Okay?”  
  
\--  
  
Days go by easily. Eduardo spends them checking out potential locations for a new office, wining and dining prospective clients, and hanging out with his friends. It’s fun.  
  
(Sometimes he wonders if this is what it would’ve been like, had he come out to California all those years ago.)  
  
Nights go by less smoothly. Eduardo tosses and turns, dreams of Suzana warning him about Mark but staring at him with Gretchen’s eyes (_“Could you please address my client as ‘Mr. Saverin’?”_), thinks of the worried glances Chris shoots at him and tries not to remember the way he looked at him during their last year at Harvard (_“Wardo, Jesus, don’t do this to yourself, _please_ –”_). He runs on the treadmill in the hotel fitness center, watching the sun rise above the gardens outside and trying not to compare it, like the sentimental idiot he is, to Mark’s rare, full-blown smiles. Even when he gets back to his suite and showers, his thoughts are somehow both dirty and romantic at the same time.  
  
It figures that just as Eduardo and Mark are getting to be friends again, he has to realize that when he told Suzana he was interested in Mark, he was making a drastic understatement.

At this point – after the arguments and misunderstandings and attempts to do better; after all the emails and the few phonecalls; after hanging out at Dustin’s and driving around the Bay Area and checking out Hoover Tower and bantering over Thai food at Facebook – Eduardo thinks his inner Mark-English dictionary is at least mostly accurate in translating Mark’s recent actions.  
  
Mark has been saying _I know how to be a better friend now_ for a while.  
  
And it’s true, and Eduardo is grateful for it (thrilled and humbled and heartened by it), and he wants to keep this delicate, reemerging friendship and build it into something better, stronger, than before.  
  
But sometimes he wonders if friendship will be enough for either of them.  
  
\--  
  
Dustin has been trying. He’s been trying to stay out of it, trying not to poke his nose into Mark and Eduardo’s business, trying to be truly neutral this time. He has a map of Switzerland as his desktop background and everything.  
  
But sometimes he can’t help himself. Like with blurting out Mark’s feelings to Wardo over the phone, or telling Mark that he’s the one who needs to say the words to make Wardo believe it.  
  
Like now.  
  
Because if there’s one thing that can fuck Mark and Eduardo up even more than they do themselves, if there’s one catalyst to make their chemistry go from volatile to combustion, it’s the presence of a third wheel. It’s Christy squeezing her way in between Mark and Wardo on a couch, or Sean dazzling Mark with his grandiose visions. It’s Suzana putting her feet in Wardo’s lap in Mark’s office and Wardo absentmindedly rubbing them, and Suzana giving Mark knowing looks when Eduardo brings her food, and Suzana calling Wardo fucking _pet names_.  
  
(“Literally, _gato_ and its derivatives mean ‘cat’, but it’s also slang for an attractive person,” Eduardo explains.  
  
“It’s like I called Eduardo ‘babe’ or ‘cutie’,” Suzana chips in, and Dustin regrets asking.  
  
“And I could call her _gata_ or _gatinha_ if I wanted to say she’s gorgeous -”  
  
“Why are you all in my office?” Mark asks abruptly. His knuckles are white around the edge of his desk.)  
  
And maybe Dustin shouldn’t interfere, shouldn’t ignore Chris’s warnings, shouldn’t keep thinking about lobbing something at Suzana’s head or giving Mark a hug or _forcing_ Eduardo to be less oblivious. But he can’t help it, because this all feels sickeningly familiar and being laissez-faire about it last time didn’t work out well for anyone.  
  
So when he sees Mark stomping into his office after another field trip or whatever with Wardo and Suzana, looking like he’s nearing the end of his rope, Dustin makes a decision.  
  
He’s talking to Eduardo.  
  
\--  
I’m sorry for the delay with this part! I’ve been both busy at work and sick lately, but the next part will be quicker in coming. It was originally going to be included here, but it became way too long, and part 20 is already ridiculously long and can’t be broken up. So this part and 19 more or less go together.


	19. Chapter 19

Dustin drives over to Rosewood Sand Hill and meets Eduardo at the bar.  
  
“Hey, man. Suzana’s not here, is she?”  
  
“No, she’s in the spa. We were going to go golfing after, though, if you wanted to come -”  
  
“_Ugh_, what am I, a middle-aged lawyer?”  
  
Eduardo grins. “Did you just want to grab a bite to eat and talk, or…?”  
  
“Talk. Somewhere a bit more private, ideally.”  
  
Eduardo’s eyebrows shoot up, and he quickly obtains a private dining room for them and orders some food to justify it, flicking worried looks in Dustin’s direction the whole time.  
  
“Dude, what are you doing?” Dustin asks the moment they’re alone, because he’s always hated this beating around the bush bull shit and God knows Mark and Eduardo do more than enough of it themselves.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“Suzana. _Mark_.”  
  
“What about them?” Eduardo asks.  
  
Dustin sympathizes with Mark’s complaint about it being like speaking a foreign language. Fortunately, he doesn’t have Mark’s problem of emotional constipation.  
  
“Mark is jealous. And you’re not helping. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to rub it in.”  
  
For a moment, Eduardo just looks astonished. Then his eyes narrow, and Dustin is reminded that Wardo is a bit like those cute, fluffy little animals who kill snakes. “If you didn’t know better,” he repeats.  
  
_Oh shit._  
  
“Fuck, is that it?” Eduardo fumes, leaning forward, and Dustin leans back. “Is that why you – that’s what you thought, isn’t it? Back at Harvard, you knew that Mark…and you thought I knew too and what, led him on or something?”  
  
“I…I sort of…wasn’t sure. Wardo,” Dustin presses on before Eduardo can get even more livid, “I just – you were this rich, charming, good-looking guy with tons of friends and hot girl after hot girl, and Mark’s as geeky as me -”  
  
“So am I!”  
  
“But some people are embarrassed of their inner nerd and you were always so concerned about appearances and final clubs -”  
  
“So now I’m _shallow_ too?”  
  
“- and you were always the best at reading Mark, better than I was, so if _I_ could see it, then…I mean, I sometimes wondered…”  
  
“What? You sometimes wondered _what_, Dustin?”  
  
“If it wasn’t an ego boost for you.” As soon as he says it, he regrets it, because Eduardo doesn’t look like he wants to stab Dustin anymore, he looks like Dustin’s stabbed him. “I-I mean, not – not _intentionally_. I knew you were never that much of an asshole.”  
  
“Oh, well _thank you_, Dustin! I wish I could say the same.”  
  
Dustin winces. “Okay, maybe I deserve that. But what I mean is that I didn’t think you were doing it intentionally, but maybe you were subconsciously seeking affection or something -”  
  
“Brilliant diagnosis, Dr. Moskovitz.”  
  
“- or _maybe_, Eduardo, it was my own – my own shit making me think that way because I was always a geek who had a hard time with girls and I sympathized more with Mark because I got his issues and I didn’t get yours, really, and because you wouldn’t come out to California with us -”  
  
“God_damn_ it, why does it _always_ have to come back to that?!”  
  
“Because you were our friend and our CFO and we needed you and _you weren’t there_! Because you were an Econ major and the President of the Investors’ Association who mysteriously didn’t understand that the CFO should listen to the CEO about ads and should be at company headquarters instead of off with his girlfriend! Because you weren’t there to improve Mark’s mood and I got the brunt of it, and because you weren’t there to keep a leash on Sean, and I know those last two aren’t completely fair, but -”  
  
“I’m sorry!” Eduardo says in a burst, like he’s been holding it in for years and can’t anyore, this mixture of regret and fury like scalding water. “I’m sorry that I didn’t magically understand exactly what Facebook needed like the rest of you did, and that I was actually concerned about Sean being a loose cannon, and that I never saw something my best friend _actively hid from me_ or – or that he covered up with passive-aggressive bull shit – and that you never told me about either!”

“I’m sorry too!” Dustin’s shouting now, and he never shouts like this, hoarse and hysterical.  
  
But maybe they all have things they’ve held onto for too long and tried to push too deep, things that have festered and need to be purged.  
  
“We were all brilliant kids, Wardo, but we were _kids_! We were reckless, self-centered _children_ with crippling insecurities who were scared shitless and too proud to admit it to ourselves, let alone to each other. I knew – Mark never said anything, but I _knew_ – that he thought you were off with Christy and your Phoenix buddies and leaving him behind. Or, worse, that you finally realized how he felt and _that_ was why you were suddenly staying away from him when he needed you more than ever.”  
  
Eduardo runs a hand over his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Dustin…”  
  
“So I knew how Mark felt, and I knew I felt kind of like you’d abandoned me and Chris too once you got _cool_. But I didn’t know how you must have felt because I…didn’t really try to. I didn’t think about how you had insecurities of your own and that Mark probably – probably knew about them and exploited them sometimes, to get his way or to punish you for not feeling the way he did. I was too pissed at you, in the end, to really think about what your reasons were, or how hard things must’ve been for you too. I’m sorry for all of that, Wardo.”  
  
“I’m sorry too,” Eduardo says quietly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, and I’m sorry I froze the account.” He bites his lip, and his eyes are wide and wet now. “I’m sorry I made it all about Mark and me, when I should have been thinking about you and Chris too.”  
  
Dustin nods once, somber, to show that he gets it. And then he says, “Stop it; I’m getting misty.”  
  
Eduardo laughs, and Dustin grins, and they both get to preserve what little masculine dignity they have left. “You’re quoting a movie, actually.”  
  
“Ah, _Payback_. The days when Mel Gibson wasn’t insane.”  
  
Eduardo chuckles and rubs at his eyes.  
  
Dustin looks at the food. “But, um. About what I was saying before.” He pokes at a prawn but doesn’t eat it. “Mark hid it before and you didn’t know, but now he’s not and you _do_ know. So all this with Suzana…”  
  
“All this _what_ with Suzana, Dustin?” Eduardo asks, and he seems to be honestly confused, not defensive. “She’s not my girlfriend; I told you ages ago that I didn’t have a girlfriend. She’s my friend. And she and Mark don’t get along, but I can’t force them to like each other. So what exactly is it you would like me to do?”  
  
“I just. Maybe it’s not fair to ask you to try to, like, spare Mark’s feelings or whatever. But…I can’t really think of another way to put it.”  
  
Where is Chris when he needs him? Chris could say this properly.  
  
“Dustin,” Eduardo says softly, “I can’t just take your word on how Mark – on if he – on Mark. You understand that, right? That it’s between the two of us?”  
  
_Because you two are so good at working shit out on your own? _Dustin thinks. But then, he doesn’t really want to get involved any more than necessary, and he thinks he’s gotten through to Eduardo a little, or at least made him think.  
  
He nods, and then says, “Let’s order some fries, I can’t eat these.”  
  
“You and your seafood thing.”  
  
“I don’t have a _thing_, I’ve just seen _District 9_!”  
  
\--  
  
Now that he’s not focusing entirely on Mark’s behaviour, Eduardo is noticing Suzana’s, and how others (Mark) could be interpreting it.  
  
It’s true that he and Suzana are usually openly affectionate with each other. It’s equally true that it’s entirely platonic. By Brazilian standards, they’re not even especially demonstrative.  
  
But. Now that Eduardo is paying attention, Suzana has been slightly more affectionate with him lately. More tactile, more use of endearments. Eduardo would attribute it to her aiming for comforting, but her overprotectiveness of him and her hostility towards Mark suggests it could be more than that.  
  
Eduardo checks his email – exchanges a few with various clients and colleagues, prints the e-tickets Ava sent him, and double-checks his itinerary in New York. Then he rereads the emails Mark has been sending him, still, even though they’re seeing each other in person frequently (with Suzana always, always there).

He reads _you’d never read or even heard of ender’s game before i lent it to you_. He still has the book, in fact; he’d found it mixed amongst his own when he was packing for Singapore after the depositions, and he’d been torn between tossing it and mailing it to Mark and ultimately did neither. Mark’s copy of _Ender’s Game_ sits on the lowest shelf in Eduardo’s study, in the shadows on top of _Macunaíma_ and _Butterfly Economics_.  
  
Eduardo tells Mark this in his reply, and then learns the whereabouts of his Microeconomic Theory textbook and the φ t-shirt he used to wear to bed before lending it to Mark after the incident with Dustin’s beer can pyramid.  
  
He reads _you totally knew all about flower symbolism shit not because that old girlfriend forced you, but because you thought it was romantic or something_ and, yeah, it’s absolutely mortifying and absolutely true.  
  
Eduardo thinks about replying with pictures of hazel and daffodil, _reconciliation_ and _new beginnings_. He tries not to think of jonquil, _desire_, and amaranth, _unfading love_. He tries not to think about how Mark might flush – how he might answer – if he sent a picture of acacia (both _friendship_ and _secret love_) with a question mark.  
  
He thinks about Dr. Wu’s gentle inquiry, about his father’s terse command. About what he fears and what he wants.  
  
Eduardo isn’t a hundred percent sure yet, but he thinks he’s getting close.  
  
\--  
  
Just when Chris thinks his nerves can’t possibly take any more abuse, Sean comes back into town.  
  
He invites them all over to his place, which would be easy enough to sidestep – he and Dustin get along but were never close, and Mark’s attitude towards him is in one of its sour phases at present – if Eduardo hadn’t agreed to come over with Suzana in tow. Which means Mark is going. Which means Chris _has_ to go. Which means he forces Dustin to come as well.  
  
That he’s relying on _Dustin_ to maintain his sanity is a very bad sign.  
  
Chris drives over with Dustin and Mark. The latter is already in a visibly bad mood, and talkative and twitchy in a way he only gets when he’s had far too little sleep and far too much caffeine.  
  
“…don’t understand why he’s friends with Sean at all,” Mark is saying. “Like, when did that happen?”  
  
Based on the impatient look Mark shoots him in the rearview mirror, this is not a rhetorical question.  
  
“I don’t think it was really like that,” Chris says. “I think they just ran into each other at conferences and clubs several times, and Sean talked at Eduardo like he had no reason not to.”  
  
With Sean, there’s no way of knowing whether he genuinely didn’t understand why Eduardo might not want to engage in chit-chat with him (because Sean is more than egotistical enough for that to be the case), or whether he only pretended to in order to play on Eduardo’s ingrained manners and innate amiability to maneuver him into a truce (because Sean is also more than paranoid enough to think that Eduardo would send assassins after him or something equally worthy of Tarantino as long as they were ‘enemies’).  
  
“And I guess Wardo started finding it more funny than annoying after a while.” Chris shrugs.  
  
There was also that whole…thing in Vegas a couple of years ago. Eduardo never told him the whole story, beyond how his friend’s bachelor party was derailed after he ran into Sean, whose “craziness may actually warp reality”. Frankly, Chris was just relieved not to have to clean up after Sean getting into trouble with the Nevada Gaming Commission, an underage Mafia princess, the cops, and _Cirque du Soleil_ all at once. Again.  
  
“But why would Sean invite _her_?” Mark questions.  
  
“Because she’s Wardo’s…” _Don’t say ‘best friend’, Chris, you idiot!_ “…friend.”  
  
He can feel Mark glaring at him and avoids looking at the rearview mirror.  
  
“His ‘friend’?”  
  
“No, I meant -”  
  
“She’s Eduardo’s friend and she’s hot,” Dustin says. “Sean is probably hitting on her right now.”  
  
This makes Mark calm down a little, and Chris shoots Dustin a grateful look as they pull into the driveway.

They find Sean, Eduardo and Suzana in the back, along with Sean’s latest girlfriend (Chris makes a mental note to find her purse and check her ID), lounging by the pool.  
  
Sean is gesturing dramatically with one hand and holding a martini in the other, yammering away; Eduardo is laughing; Suzana is appraising Sean with mingled amusement and bewilderment; the girlfriend is examining her turquoise fingernails.  
  
“Aw, you guys didn’t bring beer!” Sean whines upon spotting them. “Worst. Guests. Ever.”  
  
“Worst _host_ ever,” says Eduardo. “Get off your lazy ass and make them drinks.”  
  
“That’s what I have a butler for.”  
  
Eduardo snorts. “A hundred bucks says that when you inevitably meet your end through a grisly murder, the butler did it, in the kitchen, with a cocktail shaker.”  
  
“You know I don’t gamble anymore, man,” Sean says, aiming his cocktail umbrella at Eduardo accusingly. “I value my kneecaps.”  
  
“They weren’t serious, and it was your own fault anyway.”  
  
“You’re the one who was counting cards!”  
  
“Only because I was drunk and you talked me into it!”  
  
“Oh, right, and impressing the contortionist twins had nothing at all to do with it…”  
  
“Yeah, okay,” says Dustin, “_I_ will go get us drinks.”  
  
“Just water for me, please,” Chris tells him. Lord knows someone needs to be the sober and sane one, what with Eduardo into the vodka and bickering with Sean about black jack, double-jointedness, and the ethics of impersonating a member of Celine Dion’s entourage.  
  
Eventually, Sean breaks off to say, “Mark, dude, what’s up?”  
  
“You look like a lobster,” Mark states, and then sits down stiffly on the edge of a lawn chair.  
  
“You probably should put on more sunscreen,” Eduardo says, and Sean glares a little.  
  
For once, Chris sympathizes. He’s liable to roast out here too, while Eduardo and Suzana both have glowing, perfect tans seldom seen outside of _Sports Illustrated_. Mark is glancing at them too, surreptitiously.  
  
By ‘surreptitiously’, Chris means ‘frequently and blatantly looking over and then looking away with the least convincing interest in a trampoline ever, repeat’.  
  
And by ‘them’, he means Eduardo. Specifically, his bare chest, lean and tan and with sweat beading on his navel.  
  
“Melanoma is not a joke,” Eduardo is saying, giving Sean a look over his sunglasses.  
  
“Okay, _Mom_.”  
  
“Mark, Chris, you guys should put sunscreen on too. The UV index today is -”  
  
“We can watch the Weather Channel ourselves, Eduardo,” Sean says, rolling his eyes. “Besides, look – clouds!”  
  
“Actually, with this kind of cloud coverage, you’re likely to get scattering.”  
  
Before Sean can retort, Mark asks, “What type of cloud coverage is this, Wardo? I can never tell which type is which.”  
  
Eduardo, perking up as always when someone else actually wants to discuss the weather beyond the capacity of small talk, opens his mouth to answer, but Sean says, “Isn’t there an app for that?”  
  
“If there isn’t, you should totally invent one,” Suzana says to Eduardo.  
  
Sean starts pontificating about Apple vs. Android vs. BlackBerry apps, which leads to an argument with Mark (Chris can’t tell whether this is based on actual disagreement or on irritation at Sean for monopolizing conversation when Suzana is already taking up so much of Eduardo’s attention), eventually prompting Eduardo to say, “Guys, seriously. _Sunscreen_.”  
  
“You and I should put some on too,” Suzana says, speaking to Eduardo but looking at Mark in a way that is terrible for Chris’s blood pressure. “We’ve been out for a while and we were in the pool. Do my back, will you?”  
  
Chris watches with growing trepidation as Suzana lies down on her stomach, facing away from Eduardo and towards Mark, and unties the back of her bikini top. As Eduardo starts rubbing lotion on her back, she winks maliciously. Mark appears to have been rendered speechless with rage.

Dustin comes back, drinks balanced on a tray, and Chris immediately downs one, because _fuck it_, he needs it.  
  
“Hey, that was -”  
  
“You’re the designated driver now.”  
  
“Ugh, _fine_, but I don’t see why you -”  
  
Suzana, still engaged in a staring contest with Mark, says, “Eduardo, I’ll do your back next.”  
  
“…we’re going to have to call a cab,” Dustin declares, downing the drink he got for Mark.  
  
Sean is now whispering something into his giggling girlfriend’s ear, and Suzana and Eduardo switch places, and Mark jumps to his feet the instant Suzana puts a finger on Wardo’s spine. His flip-flops snap loudly as he stalks into the house.  
  
Eduardo frowns at his retreating back and Chris watches emotions flit across his face – fleeting worry, dawning comprehension, instant doubt, and a dozen other emotions, too quick and mixed to read. But he pushes himself up and grabs Suzana’s hand.  
  
“Hey, you’ve still got -”  
  
Eduardo interrupts her in Portuguese, voice low, disapproving.  
  
Suzana looks embarrassed, but replies heatedly.  
  
Eduardo ignores her, standing up. “Anybody else want another drink?”  
  
_Hell yes,_ Chris thinks.  
  
“Hell yes,” Dustin says. He holds out his glass.  
  
“Okay,” Eduardo says distractedly, but he doesn’t notice the extended glass and heads into the house.  
  
Suzana mutters something likely to be very unflattering in Portuguese.  
  
“Should we let them be in there alone?” Dustin asks nervously.  
  
“I don’t know,” Chris admits.  
  
Sean takes a break from whispering obscenities to roll his eyes at them. “Oh, relax. If my housekeeper hasn’t cleaned up more spunk than hotel maids and CSI combined, then Voldemort couldn’t take Vader.”  
  
While Chris and Suzana both stare at him, Dustin makes a shrill sound of outrage and starts ranting about the Force.  
  
“We are the only sane people here, aren’t we,” says Suzana, and Chris recognizes the expression on her face from seeing it so often in the mirror. The face of someone who has just realized they are locked in a room full of lunatics.  
  
“You’ve been deliberately provoking Mark for two weeks,” he says. “Your sanity is questionable at best.”  
  
“You worked for him for years, and now you’re doing it again. Voluntarily.”  
  
“Touché.”  
  
\--  
The inspiration for Eduardo’s golden ratio t-shirt: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/sciencemath/9eec/  
  
The Victorian language of flowers is actually far from clear-cut; many flowers have multiple meanings, depending on your source. Daffodil, for instance, can symbolize new beginnings, but as it’s the English name for varieties of the Narcissus flower, it can also symbolize pride and unrequited love. Jonquil is also simply a particular type of Narcissus flower. Some dictionaries list the meaning of both daffodil and jonquil as _please love me_.  
  
Also, when Eduardo refers to amaranth, he’s in fact not being very specific – one type of amaranth, globe amaranth, does indeed symbolize unfading love, but another flower in the same family is commonly known as ‘love-lies-bleeding’. A tragically suitable flower for Mark and Wardo, I think.  
  
Thanks for reading! :)


	20. Chapter 20

Eduardo finds Mark in the kitchen, fiddling with an ice cube tray. He sets his sunglasses on the counter and leans against the fridge, arms folded across his chest. Out of the sun and into the air conditioned house, he’s a bit cold. “Mark…”  
  
“Did you want a drink?” Mark asks without looking at him.  
  
“Um, no. Thank you.”  
  
Mark moves onto Sean’s impressive (or terrifying) collection of bottles, still without looking at Eduardo. “The bathroom’s down the hall.”  
  
“I didn’t come in to go to the bathroom either.”  
  
Mark says nothing, just keeps making a screwdriver.  
  
Eduardo, trying not to feel uncomfortable, swipes at the sunscreen on his back that Suzana didn’t finish rubbing in. He wipes it off on his stomach, and catches Mark glance at his fingers briefly, before looking back at his glass.  
  
“I’m not sleeping with her,” Eduardo blurts.  
  
“You’re just letting her feel you up in public,” Mark says without missing a beat.  
  
“I’m _not sleeping with her_. I never have. We’re just friends and she – she’s been trying to needle you.”  
  
Mark finally looks at him, eyes sharp. “And you let her.”  
  
Eduardo winces, thinking about that cathartic conversation with Dustin, about how oblivious he’s been. About what Dr. Wu would say were the underlying reasons for it. “I…I guess I did, but -”  
  
“I think you’re going to have to reconsider which one of us is fond of hurting the other.”  
  
“Mark, you can’t deny that you’ve intentionally hurt me before, and in ways far worse than -”  
  
“I don’t deny that I’ve done it before. I _have_ tried to stop doing it, though, which is more than I can say for you.”  
  
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Eduardo says quietly, his stomach twisting the way it did when he watched Mark walk away, that sick-scared stab of realization. “I asked Suzana when we came here not to pick a fight, for my sake, and she agreed. I didn’t expect her to use a subtler way of – or to try to – to make you feel…um…”  
  
“Jealous.”  
  
Eduardo nods, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.  
  
“You want me to say that too,” Mark says eventually, sounding surprised. “Before, you didn’t like it when I implied how I – that I – but now you…you want me to say it.”  
  
“I…” Eduardo pauses, takes a deep breath.  
  
There is no going back from this, from how he answers. A comfortable lie or the terrifying truth. Pulling away or opening up. Fear or want.  
  
(He’s afraid to trust Mark again, even a little, but he wants – he wants –)  
  
“…yes. Yes, I want you to say it, Mark, and I want you to mean it.”  
  
(– he _wants_.)  
  
And maybe once Mark would have balked, faltered, lashed out. To Mark, offense is the best defense, always, and his offense is devastating. But not this time.  
  
Mark just nods once, and then he’s putting his glass down and striding up to Eduardo, who straightens reflexively, but Mark shoves him against the fridge and kisses him.  
  
There’s none of the wary eagerness of the last two times, none of Mark being uncertain, overly careful, like Eduardo was a skittish deer he didn’t want to spook. Mark kisses Eduardo without hesitation or restraint. There’s nothing but _want_ in the way he presses their mouths together, feral but focused, greedy, intent.  
  
Eduardo can do nothing but moan and open his mouth. He’s always liked this side of Mark – the part that goes after what he wants with unshakable certainty that he’ll get it, the way he commits himself fully to a goal, puts his very self at stake. And Mark doesn’t just take a mile when Eduardo gives him an inch, he takes _everything_, licks his way into Eduardo’s mouth like he’s laying claim to it, runs a hand down Eduardo’s side and leaves goose bumps in his wake, pushes his hips into Eduardo’s, hard and deliberate.  
  
Mark pulls back a little and Eduardo whines at the loss. Mark nips at his bottom lip, breathes into the sliver of space between their mouths. “You want me to _say_ things? I’m jealous, Wardo, I’m always fucking jealous when someone else gets to touch you.” He shoves their mouths together again, fingers leaving Eduardo’s side to trace the edge of his swimming trunks, to trail along his navel.  
  
“Fuck,” Eduardo mutters into Mark’s mouth, bucking his hips.

Mark’s other hand slides behind his neck, tugs on the hair at his nape so that his head tips back, exposing his throat. Mark drags his teeth along the column of Eduardo’s neck while he slides a hand into his shorts. Eduardo groans, eyes falling shut as Mark wraps cool, nimble fingers around his cock, achingly hard already.  
  
“Look out the window, Wardo.” Mark’s breath is hot against his ear, and Eduardo looks, eyes half-mast, through the window to the pool and the people outside. “None of them have ever touched you like this, have they?”  
  
“No,” Eduardo gasps, trying to arch into Mark’s grip, which is incredibly hot and excruciatingly slow and _not enough_. “Mark, _Jesus_, more -”  
  
“And none of them will ever _get to_ touch you like this, will they?”  
  
“No,” Eduardo pants. “Just you.”  
  
Mark kisses him again, not as rough this time but still fierce, demanding, and Eduardo responds in kind, sucks Mark’s tongue into his mouth and bites at his lips and moves a hand to slip under the back of Mark’s t-shirt, to push against the small of his back so their hips grind together. Mark thrusts against him like he can’t help it, but then pulls back. He looks Eduardo up and down, wetting his lips, and Eduardo shivers like that tongue has been all over his skin instead of just Mark’s gaze.  
  
“I don’t like the idea of any of them looking in here and getting to see you like this either,” Mark states, and then takes his hand away, which is just – completely cruel and unfair.  
  
Eduardo makes a sound of outraged protest, but Mark simply grabs his wrist and tugs Eduardo out of the kitchen with him.  
  
They end up…somewhere, in some room. Eduardo can’t really pay attention to anything but Mark’s mouth and hands and eyes, almost black with arousal and burning on Eduardo as he sprawls on his back. Eduardo gives a quick squeeze to himself through his shorts to relieve some of the pressure and then trails his hands up his chest, pinches his nipples lightly, watches Mark watch him.  
  
And that’s really hot, something Eduardo has fantasized about before and would like to try someday, Mark watching him and maybe telling him what to do, precisely how to get himself off. But not today. He wants Mark’s hands on him and he wants it as of _yesterday_.  
  
“Mark, come on,” he urges, both a command and a plea. “Come on, touch me.”  
  
Mark closes his eyes for a moment, like it’s an unbearable turn-on to hear Eduardo say that, or like he’s been waiting for something like it, something like permission. Eduardo doesn’t get to contemplate it for long because Mark is on him and _finally_ touching him as he kisses Eduardo like his mouth is the only source of oxygen in the room.  
  
His hands tremble slightly as they skim Eduardo’s sides, feather-light, as if Eduardo’s skin is something fragile, sacrosanct. He traces his ribs and bellybutton and collarbone with his fingers, rubs saliva-slick fingertips over his nipples. Eduardo does touching of his own, running his hands over Mark’s shoulder blades beneath his t-shirt, scraping his short nails against Mark’s sides, tangling one hand into his curls.  
  
The whole time, they kiss, still greedy but gentler, and rock against one another.  
  
When it gets to be both too much and not enough, Eduardo gets his hands between them despite the tight press of their bodies, shoves Mark’s shorts down and then his own. It’s lacking any sort of finesse, the way they thrust against each other, all friction and wet heat, sloppy as their kisses have turned, but _fuck_ it feels good.  
  
Mark is murmuring something against his mouth, low and indistinct, so Eduardo licks along Mark’s jaw and nibbles at his earlobe, breathes, “Are you saying you want me, Mark?”  
  
“Yes,” Mark all but snarls the word, thrusts against Eduardo harder, bites and sucks at the hollow of his throat. “Yes, I want you, I want you so fucking badly, Wardo, _always_ -”  
  
“You – you’ve got me.” Eduardo barely manages to choke the words out before he’s coming, Mark seconds behind him, and the world goes hazy and bright around the two of them.

It’s only when Mark starts to shift off him that Eduardo tells his brain to try thinking again, because no, they’re not doing the fooling-around-and-leaving thing again.  
  
Eduardo grabs onto one of Mark’s wrists and tangles their legs so that Mark can’t get far, twisting so that they’re on their sides facing one another. “Don’t cut the afterglow short, Mark,” he scolds, smiling with his eyes closed, and Mark exhales, sounding exasperated but amused.  
  
“We’re both disgusting right now, you realize?”  
  
Eduardo feels sticky and gross from his neck to his knees, but he doesn’t care much at the moment, far more attuned to everywhere Mark’s body is pressed into his. “And you’re such a stickler for cleanliness,” he says, slitting his eyes open.  
  
“No, but you are. Remember the Great Suit Jacket Crisis of 2003? I still have _nightmares_, Wardo.” Mark says it all deadpan, but his eyes are mocking.  
  
“So do I,” Eduardo replies, trying to sound serious and failing miserably. “My dry cleaning bill was horrendous and I think the dry cleaner thought I was a serial killer or something.”  
  
“That might’ve had something to do with Dustin calling ahead and asking if they knew how to get blood out of purple velour.”  
  
“He’s lucky I didn’t start my killing spree with him.”  
  
“Saving the worst for last?”  
  
Eduardo laughs, and watches the corners of Mark’s mouth curl up with the sound. He watches Mark and he thinks, he lets himself think: _tenho saudades tuas_. He’s not sure he ever stopped feeling it, that sentiment which is so much stronger than _I miss you_.  
  
When he was younger, his mãe used to talk sometimes about how she didn’t just miss Brazil, she _ached_ for it, yearned for not just a place but a home, a feeling anchored in time. When they went back for a visit after a couple of years in Miami, she was disappointed.  
  
_“It doesn’t feel the same,”_ she said.  
  
And Eduardo hadn’t understood, really, until his final year at Harvard. Even though it was still Harvard, and he still had Chris and other friends and the Phoenix Club and the Investors’ Association and chess and AEPi, it didn’t feel the same without Mark, without Dustin, without the four of them in that Kirkland suite.  
  
He stills feels that ache, every once in a while, when he thinks of the early days at Harvard, and especially when he allows himself to think about Mark. Not Mark the way he thought about him during the lawsuit and after (the way he had to learn to think about him, the way he had to be trained to), but the Mark of Harvard, the Mark who was his best friend, the Mark he loved and missed like he’d lost a fucking _limb_. Eduardo could never think of that Mark and _not_ feel saudade.  
  
Mark would use different, less precise words if he put it into words at all, but he clearly feels saudade too about their halcyon days, about Eduardo.  
  
But the thing is, they can’t ever go back to what they had all those years ago. There is no turning back time, and their memories are probably distorted anyway. They can’t ever have it, may never have had it at all, this romanticized, unattainable idea of what they were to one another once and what they might have been, had things turned out differently.  
  
And Eduardo is starting to realize that – that isn’t a _bad thing_. They weren’t perfect, back before Facebook, because for all the easy understanding and natural chemistry and genuine love, there were also problems and imbalances and unhealthy behaviours. But they weren’t the train wreck Eduardo sometimes liked to pretend that they were either, Mark a narcissist who always took and never gave back, Eduardo his helpless victim. Nothing was ever that black-and-white.  
  
They aren’t kids anymore, as Dustin pointed out. Eduardo would like to believe they’ve grown since then. He thinks they can learn to take the bad with the good.

And maybe he’s wrong, and Mark can’t be trusted, and Eduardo will get hurt again. The possibility is still there, still something that makes the bottom of his stomach drop out and makes him itch to run, hide, protect himself. Even though Mark has proved he cared then and cares now, that Eduardo is important to him and someone he wants in his life, that he’s – not changed, not really, but that he’s – grown up. All of that, and Eduardo is still afraid of trusting him.  
  
But the alternative is worse. Eduardo doesn’t want to let the past rule him, weigh himself down with resentment and bitterness, push people away because he’s too afraid to chance getting hurt again. For a while after the dilution, he was like that, and it made him even more miserable. He’s since learned he can be cautious and optimistic at the same time. Because maybe Mark hasn’t earned his trust back yet – but he _has_ earned a chance.  
  
The cautious, reasonable thing to do would be to stick to rebuilding their friendship before complicating it with anything more. But Eduardo’s pretty sure that ship has already sailed, what with the multiple incidences of reckless sex. Continuing to ignore the issue will only cause damage, and they have enough issues to deal with as it is. The best option at this point is to go for broke.  
  
_Okay,_ he thinks. _Okay, then._  
  
Eduardo grins and gets up, pressing a quick kiss to Mark’s mouth and telling him, “Stay here.”  
  
Mark blinks, looking like he’s not sure what just happened, and Eduardo wanders into the en suite bathroom of what appears to be a guest bedroom. He wets a towel and proceeds to clean them both up. If Mark eyes him like he would prefer to use other methods, and Eduardo licks his lips as he swipes Mark’s stomach clean, well, there’s always next time.  
  
“I’d feel bad if this were anyone’s house but Sean’s,” Eduardo notes when he’s finished with the towel.  
  
Mark still looks confused, like he’s calculating the odds of having entered the Twilight Zone, but doesn’t miss a beat in retorting, “Feel bad for whoever does his laundry.”  
  
Eduardo’s eyes widen at that. “Shit.” Maybe he should at least wash that towel in the sink…  
  
Mark rolls his eyes, but Eduardo catches a glimpse of dimples. “Only you would take that seriously, Wardo.”  
  
Eduardo smiles helplessly back, but. Speaking of more serious things. “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but…you meant everything you said, right?” he asks, because even now, when he’s decided to take a leap, he craves reassurance.  
  
Mark’s gaze is scrutinizing, sharp, like he’s trying to figure Eduardo out, but his voice is flat. “I always mean what I say.”  
  
That’s probably true, Eduardo thinks. Mark’s meaning is frequently not clear to other people, but he always seems to believe it should be. “I meant what I said too.”  
  
Mark flushes a little, and Eduardo shouldn’t be able to think he’s cute when he just wiped come off him and he can feel his neck bruising where Mark’s scraped and sucked. And yet.  
  
“You…” Mark says, and then nothing else, like he literally can’t think of what to say, which has to be a first.  
  
“So I was thinking that we should keep talking – talk more, ideally – while I’m scouting locations in New York and in -”  
  
Mark sits up abruptly. “You’re leaving again already?”  
  
“For work,” Eduardo says and when Mark gives him a sharp look, he acknowledges, “I do think a little distance might be good -”  
  
Mark snorts. “Based on what, precedent?”  
  
“I want to try this _slowly_, Mark. And clearly that’s a challenge the instant we’re alone together. So yes, I think a bit of physical distance while talking is a good idea, so that we don’t end up rushing things.” When Mark just stares at him, Eduardo says, “But yes, I’d also like to prove that history doesn’t always repeat itself.”

And then he wonders if that’s not a little too…blunt? A little too much like he’s saying he doesn’t have faith in Mark and Mark has to prove himself or something? Even if that kind of _is_ what he’s saying, shit, Mark’s still staring at him and Eduardo prepares to backpedal.  
  
“I mean both of us, Mark, we _both_ have to -”  
  
“When you say you want to ‘try’,” Mark says, lightning-quick. He’s looking at Eduardo with that single-minded focus that he usually directs at code that can change the world. “What do you mean? Try…” He swallows audibly. “Try what, exactly?”  
  
“This,” Eduardo says, gesturing between the two of them. “I want to try…not ignoring it. I want to try…seeing where it could go.” When Mark’s expression doesn’t change, Eduardo goes for stating the obvious: “As in _dating_, Mark.”  
  
Mark blinks. “Oh,” he says, in this disbelieving, quiet voice, something in it akin to wonder.  
  
“It’s not going to be easy, and we still have a lot of things to work out…but yeah, I want to try.” And maybe Eduardo isn’t quite as accomplished as he’d like to be at battling his insecurities where Mark is concerned, because he can’t help but ask, “Don’t you?”  
  
Mark gives him a look that suggests he has trouble believing that’s a serious question. “Of course I – what a ridiculous – I mean, really, Wardo, how is it not obvious by now?”  
  
Because Mark is still Mark, and seeing others’ points of view will never be his forte.  
  
“You could want…I don’t know, to be friends with benefits or something.”  
  
“Do I seem like the idiot hero of a romantic comedy to you?”  
  
Eduardo fights a losing battle against a smile. “Okay, okay. But FYI, Mark? The whole ‘saying things’ suggestion I made, and that I’m really glad you took, it applies to this too, you know? It would be helpful if sometimes you just told me what’s on your mind instead of implying it and then getting annoyed if I don’t develop telepathy. Just…putting that out there.”  
  
“It’s one thing to say I always considered you my friend; that’s something you wanted to hear,” Mark says. “You won’t want to – you won’t necessarily believe me if I say…other things…and you didn’t listen before.”  
  
Eduardo’s amusement dies a quick death. It’s a struggle not to get angry immediately, not to read accusation into Mark’s voice, not to recall the last time they had this argument and wonder if Mark will always be obstinate, will never give even a little. Eduardo takes a deep breath and reminds himself not to jump to conclusions about Mark’s meaning or motives. But.  
  
“It’s hardly fair to expect me to blindly trust you, Mark,” he says dully, and Mark makes a face but doesn’t argue. “And I’m not sure what you mean about my not listening before.”  
  
He can guess, but if they start talking about advertising, it will lead to talking about…well. Things they need to talk about, but which Eduardo doesn’t feel ready for, just yet.  
  
Of course, Mark says bluntly, “How many times did we argue about ads, Wardo? How many times did I ask you to come out to California?”  
  
“I wasn’t the only one not listening, Mark. You paid no attention to my quitting that internship, you forgot me at the airport, you ignored my reservations about Sean and never mentioned that he was living with you and setting up -”  
  
“Sean who you’re now friends with.”  
  
“So _what_? It doesn’t mean I was wrong about him being unreliable and into drugs, and you overlooking it with no explanation.”  
  
“Sean was experienced and he was useful where Facebook was concerned -”  
  
“And you worshipped the ground he walked on.”  
  
Mark exhales, loud and exasperated. “I…may have looked up to him…slightly…in the very beginning. It’s embarrassing enough to remember without you exaggerating it, Eduardo. And not meeting you at the airport was an honest mistake.”  
  
“The kind you made frequently,” Eduardo points out, less bitterly than he once might have, remembering Chris saying _“I wonder if Mark tried so hard to hide his non-platonic feelings for you that he sometimes went too far, hid too much, acted more distant than he meant to”_.

“As for that stupid internship that you wouldn’t have even bothered with if not for your father?” Mark says. “Excuse me for occasionally tuning out rather than listening to you go on and on about ads and New York and _Christy_. That’s not on the same scale as you ignoring my reasons for not wanting ads yet and for wanting my CFO to be in Palo Alto, or – or when you finally did come out and I said I…it was the closest I ever came to telling you that I…and you acted like you never even _heard me_.”  
  
Eduardo shuts his eyes. And then he lies back down on the bed, arm flung over his face. He has to think about this so he and Mark don’t keep arguing in circles.  
  
The mattress shifts, and Eduardo reaches out automatically to grab Mark’s sleeve, keep him here, settle his hand over Mark’s forearm. Mark stills, but he’s tense under his grip.  
  
“Okay,” Eduardo says. “Okay, so neither of us was listening to the other. We both fucked up there. Instead of arguing about who was worse, why don’t we agree not to repeat that mistake?”  
  
“It’s that easy, is it?”  
  
“No, it’s not easy, because you don’t like hearing that I have difficulty trusting you for entirely legitimate reasons and I don’t like hearing -”  
  
“You want to hear an explanation for the dilution that will miraculously make everything better,” Mark cuts him off. “You don’t like hearing anything different.”  
  
Eduardo slides his arm off his face, looks at the tense horizon of Mark’s shoulders, the stubborn line of his back, how his posture is as brittle as his tone. The anger drains out of him at the sight. At the realization that Mark is afraid too – afraid to hope, afraid to trust, afraid of a lack of forgiveness just as Eduardo fears a lack of remorse.  
  
Eduardo sits up and wraps both arms around Mark from behind, resting his forehead on a bony shoulder. Mark has, impossibly, tensed even more and may not even be breathing. He never liked hugs, Eduardo remembers that, how Mark tolerated shoulder pats and a hand on his back but went stiff as a board and very awkward the few times Eduardo hugged him. Before, Eduardo always released him quickly, the whole thing a little embarrassing and a little endearing. Now, he holds tighter, until he feels Mark take a breath and start to relax against him in tiny increments.  
  
“You’re insane,” Mark says, but it doesn’t come out insulting or even teasing. Mark sounds like he did when he realized Eduardo wants to try this out, like Eduardo has done something completely unexpected, inexplicable, and amazing.  
  
Eduardo turns his head so that he’s speaking softly and directly into Mark’s ear. “Mark, I don’t think there’s anything that could miraculously make everything better.” He feels Mark’s spine stiffen against his chest again, and he shuffles closer, wraps his arms tighter, presses his mouth against Mark’s collarbone. “That’s naïve or unhealthy or both and I haven’t thought like that in a long time. But whatever the explanation is…I want to hear it.”  
  
He takes a deep breath, feels Mark breathing slightly too quickly in his arms, his pulse fast against Eduardo’s lips.  
  
“I want to hear it,” Eduardo repeats. “It doesn’t have to be right now; I’m emotionally exhausted already and would prefer to discuss this another time. But I do want to discuss it eventually because we have to, Mark, there’s no getting around it. And I know you think that I won’t like whatever the explanation is, but – but you’ve been wrong about my reactions to things before. You thought I didn’t like knowing that you have romantic feelings for me -”  
  
“You _didn’t_,” Mark insists.  
  
“Not at first, because I was shocked and because I didn’t realize you felt that _and_ friendship, I thought it was just another way you didn’t really care about me. So I was wrong too.”  
  
“You misjudge my motives,” Mark says, and it’s less of an accusation than a revelation, “and I misjudge your reactions. Huh.”  
  
“Maybe it’s possible you’re wrong about how I’ll react to other things then?” Eduardo suggests.  
  
“Maybe,” Mark breathes, and Eduardo closes his eyes for a moment to let that sink in, to savour it. But then Mark follows up with, “Can we be done with the hugging now?”

Eduardo laughs and lets go, shoving at Mark’s shoulder. “Way to ruin the moment, Mark.”  
  
“Ugh, ‘the moment’? Are you stealing lines from Hallmark now?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Brilliant come back, Wardo.”  
  
“And here I thought that maybe you didn’t like me hugging you because it made you think dirty thoughts,” Eduardo says, and watches Mark turn an interesting shade of red and bite his bottom lip. “Yeah, that? A topic to revisit later. But not now, because…with the trying slowly and everything.”  
  
“Your wordplay continues to astound,” Mark says, but his aim at a dry tone is kind of ruined by the way he’s eyeing Eduardo like he wants to jump him again.  
  
Which is all kinds of appealing, but Eduardo reminds himself – no rushing things. He stands up, commenting, “I’m kind of surprised no one has come in here to, like, try to referee or something.”  
  
“Or to threaten to disembowel me,” Mark says as they head out. When Eduardo shoots him a quizzical look, he shrugs. “Chris and his ‘friendly chats’. And Suzana would be onboard with it, I’m sure. She always looks at me like she’s two seconds away from a Ripley-in-_Aliens_ moment.”  
  
Eduardo has to laugh because – yeah, Suzana takes protectiveness to scary levels, and also, thank God, Mark’s finally seeing it as sisterly or maternal instead of sexual. “You know, Dustin sort of acted the same way with me…”  
  
\--  
_A/N:_ I really, really tried to get this part posted before the holidays started, but I always end up busier than I expect to be during the holidays, and time got away from me. Sorry! You guys are the most awesome readers and commenters anyone could ask for, and I felt terrible giving a time estimate for an update and then missing it.  
  
Thank you all so much for reading, and happy holidays! :)


	21. Chapter 21

Rumours of my demise were greatly exaggerated.  
  
I am so, _so_ sorry for the long delay with this fic – I blame a certain newsmagazine publicizing this fandom, which had the side effect giving me a panic attack and writer’s block in the process. Nothing much seems to have come from it, though, so I eventually stopped freaking out and started writing again. Thank you to everyone who has kept reading this, in spite of the long wait. You guys are awesome! :)  
\--  
  
Yeah, they’re fooling no one, Eduardo thinks.  
  
When he and Mark return to Sean’s backyard, Eduardo has changed out of his bathing suit; even leaving off his jacket, tie and socks, all the marks on his skin are covered. He and Mark both look presentable, if one doesn’t study their mouths too closely. And yet, Chris takes one look at them before muttering about ulcers, Dustin before downing a shot, Sean with an obnoxious snicker, and Suzana with a dangerous narrowing of her eyes.  
  
Any uncomfortable lines of questioning are avoided because of Sean, of all people. “Hey, Eduardo, I was about to start up the BBQ and I know you’re into cooking, ‘cause you’re lame like that, so -”  
  
“You’re asking for my help, in other words.”  
  
“Well…if you’d rather I handle it by myself…”  
  
“Step away from the flammable object,” Eduardo says gravely, pointing a finger at Sean in warning before glancing back at Mark. “For everyone’s safety, I think it’s best I help him with the barbeque.”  
  
“Definitely,” Mark agrees promptly. “Even I know you shouldn’t be able to start a kitchen fire when all you’re making is a bowl of cereal.”  
  
Normally, Eduardo would question how that’s even possible, but Sean is involved. Enough said.  
  
“Mark!” Dustin bellows. “Get over here, so I can issue my complaints to you about Not-Chris!”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“His name is _Thomas_, Dustin,” Chris says, exasperated.  
  
“He is the Riley to your Angel, the Kyle Rayner to your Hal Jordan, the Ashton Kutcher to your Charlie Sheen…”  
  
Chris splutters inelegantly, which means he’s at least halfway in the bag. “You’re comparing me to _Charlie Sheen_? When _Sean_ is within sight?”  
  
“Hey!” Sean shouts, offended. “I’m nowhere _near_ that old. That’s just _mean_, dude.”  
  
“…Thomas is the PR person who’s replacing Chris?” Eduardo guesses.  
  
Mark shrugs, and while he gets dragged into Chris and Dustin’s bickering, Eduardo helps Sean with the steaks and endures his many double entendres about what went on in his house and about all the not-so-surreptitious glances Eduardo keeps shooting in Mark’s direction.  
  
(Mark keeps glancing at him too, with this look of disbelieving pleasure, like he can’t quite believe he’s allowed to look.)  
  
Conversation over dinner ranges from who should have won the Oscar for Best Picture last year to the economic woes of Europe to why Sean was “politely asked” never to return to Peru.  
  
And then Dustin decides that there is a pool and this is California and therefore they must all play a game in the water. He and Suzana face off against Sean and his girlfriend in a game of chicken fight, while Eduardo, Mark and Chris mercilessly make fun of them. By the time the sun starts to set, Eduardo’s stomach is sore from laughing so much.  
  
“Oh, this seems like a good idea,” Mark says flatly, when Dustin talks Chris into joining in a game of sharks and minnows. “A bunch of drunk idiots chasing and grabbing each other underwater. What could possibly go wrong?”  
  
“Wardo,” Chris says, while Eduardo laughs, “if anything happens, you’re the lifeguard.”  
  
“Liability,” Eduardo drawls dryly. “Fantastic.” He revels in the appreciative smirk that earns from Mark.  
  
“And you,” Chris says, glaring at Mark, “don’t distract him.”  
  
“That’s the least of your worries. I’d advise Wardo not to risk getting pulled under when you panic and flail.”  
  
Chris flips him off and then performs a surprisingly impressive dive for someone with that much alcohol in his system.

Eduardo and Mark keep their conversation light, with Mark rambling about Facebook’s switchover to timeline and Eduardo about La Niña, but it’s not quite casual, not quite relaxed. Eduardo feels buzzed, part anxiety, part amazement, part anticipation. His eyes keep getting drawn to the slivers of light reflecting off the pool’s shifting surface glimmering moonlight-pale against Mark’s skin, quicksilver-bright in his eyes, and his thoughts race a mile a minute.  
  
With what a relief it is to finally stop fighting himself. With panicky questions about long-distance relationships, and things he and Mark have yet to come to an understanding about, and gay sex. With tangential, nervous-excited musings about said gay sex. With worry about how the press and the business circles they run in and their families (oh God, _his father_) will react when this inevitably comes out. With wondering how they’re going to strike a balance with each other and their lives – work vs. personal life, the need to take things slow vs. the desire to make up for lost time, all the ways they just _get_ each other so easily vs. all the ways they can get each other entirely wrong…  
  
Stars are starting to break out above them when Eduardo asks, “You only had one beer, right? A couple of hours ago?”  
  
“Yeah, with dinner.”  
  
Eduardo remembers; he lost his train of thought watching Mark take a sip from the bottle. “You’d be okay to drive, then? I mean – I know Chris drove here, I don’t want you to make off with his car or anything, but he clearly can’t drive, and Suzy flies home tomorrow morning, so we should be heading off soon, and after she leaves I have a lunch meeting with a client and then a teleconference with the office and then my flight to New York, and you must be itching to get back to work but I kind of wanted to talk, um, _alone_, so I was just thinking -”  
  
“I’ll drive you,” Mark says, and then, before Eduardo can wind himself up trying not to impose, “_Wardo_. I’m driving you. Stop butchering English grammar with your run-on sentences.”  
  
“There was only one run-on sentence, Mark. Also, allow me to refer you to the case of _Pot vs. Kettle_…”  
  
\--  
  
The drive to the hotel is…not the most comfortable experience of Eduardo’s life.  
  
Suzana leans forward from the back seat, poking her head between him and Mark and blatantly studying them both in complete silence.  
  
Mark is quiet too, and Eduardo would almost believe he’s as unruffled as he seems – would almost wonder with the old familiar twist and fall in his stomach: _is he even paying attention to me?_ – if he didn’t notice Mark’s grip on the steering wheel (fingers held tight so they won’t twitch) and how Mark has not snuck a single glance in his direction since they got in the car (stepped under Suzana’s scrutiny).  
  
Mark is nervous.  
  
In spite of everything, Eduardo still finds it a bit surreal, that he of all people can make _Mark_ any kind of anxious. It’s both flattering and flustering, and _God_, he’s turning into such a fourteen-year-old girl about Mark, isn’t he?  
  
But there’s a tiny part of him (a part that’s still scared and still not entirely free of resentment) whispering that Mark has no right to be nervous. If anyone has the right to be scared about this fledgling, fragile thing they’ve started, it’s Eduardo. What does Mark have to be scared of, really? What could Eduardo possibly do that would come anywhere close to what Mark has done to him?  
  
The larger part of him, though – the part that’s grown up and gone to therapy and refuses to be ruled by fear and bitterness – that part remembers the alley in New York (_“You never, _ever_ thought of me that way, you’d never even _consider_ -”_), and his hotel room (_“You wanted to – to shove it in my face that I can never have what I want, as if I didn’t know that already -”_), and their first phone call in years (_“I have no idea what you want, now.”_). That part wants to soothe Mark’s worries the same way Mark has been trying, in his own weird way, to soothe Eduardo’s.

Mark’s car comes to a stop in front of the hotel.  
  
“Zuckerberg,” Suzana says from the back seat. “If you hurt him again, I’ll have your balls for earrings.”  
  
While Eduardo makes a strangled sound of mortification, Mark meets Suzana’s gaze in the rearview mirror and says, “Fair enough.”  
  
“I already have a mother and a lawyer who occasionally tries to mother me,” Eduardo reminds her as she steps outside. “I don’t need another.”  
  
“Don’t compare me to your mãe, please. Gretchen is kick-ass, though.” Suzana points at him in warning. “Keep in mind that you _will_ be telling me everything in the morning.”  
  
“Likewise,” Eduardo says pointedly. She still has a lot of explaining to do. “Have a good night.”  
  
“_Até amanhã_.”  
  
Eduardo shakes his head as he turns back to Mark. In the low light of the car, he can see that Mark’s expression is more amused than angry as the door closes and he meets Eduardo’s eyes.  
  
“So,” Eduardo says, shifting so that he’s facing Mark, “you know I’m going back to Singapore in a few weeks, right?”  
  
Mark nods.  
  
“It’ll be a few months before everything is ready for the move.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“And I won’t even know for sure which city I’ll be relocating to for another month or two.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“And then it will be several months of essentially living in two places, constantly travelling between the two North American offices, wherever they are.”  
  
“Wardo, I know all this already.”  
  
Eduardo nods. “I’m just trying to…to say that for a good year or so, the only kind of relationship I’ll be able to have is a semi-long-distance one. Just…putting that out there as a…um, potentially problematic area in the future.”  
  
“Okay.” Mark bites his lip, which is rather distracting. “But you’ll be back? Before you fly to Singapore, you’ll come back here?”  
  
“Yeah, for the shareholders’ meeting.”  
  
“Oh. Of course, right, that’s – right.”  
  
“No, I didn’t mean – I –” Eduardo lets out a breath, exasperated at them both for being weird about this. It’s also reassuring, how they’re both trying a little too hard to communicate clearly, because they finally are _trying_. “I’m planning to extend my stay in Palo Alto a bit. I opened negotiations with Ava at a week, but she’ll fight me down to a couple of days, I’m sure, she always wins these things. But I’ll see you…you know, after.”  
  
“I could…” Mark licks his lips. “I could pick you up when you fly in?”  
  
In terms of practicality, the idea is…well, a bit silly. On the day of a meeting with shareholders, the CEO should not be taking an hour or two out of his busy schedule to personally pick up a shareholder who can just as easily use a car service.  
  
In personal terms, though, it’s – a gesture. It’s Mark’s way of saying _I’m paying attention_ and _I’m capable of being considerate_.  
  
(And _history won’t be repeating itself_.)  
  
“That would be nice,” Eduardo says, pulling off an even tone pretty well, he thinks, considering the way he feels like climbing over the gearshift and either hugging Mark or sticking his tongue down his throat.  
  
He must be smiling sappily or something, though, because Mark looks at him and groans, “Stop it.”  
  
“Stop what?” Eduardo asks, admittedly just to bug him.  
  
“Looking at me like I’m Snow White and you’re a woodland creature who wants to follow me around singing.”  
  
“Sorry,” Eduardo says, not even slightly sincere. “I just didn’t know you could be so…” He smiles beatifically. “…sweet.”  
  
Mark makes a gagging sound. “_Stop_.”  
  
“You’re even _blushing_.”  
  
“_Wardo_.”  
  
“If only I had a camera…”  
  
“If only I had a _gun_.”  
  
“Snow White can’t shoot a woodland creature, Mark.”  
  
He snorts. “Would’ve made that movie ten times more interesting. Also, I don’t see guns making it any more disturbing, when the plot revolves around attempted filicide and a prince with necrophilia. Then again…that’s not as bad as animal cruelty…”  
  
“Okay, okay, you’re not sweet, forget I said anything,” Eduardo says with a laugh. “I’ll send you my flight details later. And, um, maybe you could visit Singapore sometime before I leave it?”

“I could do that,” Mark says, and his voice is reassuringly flat, matter-of-fact, certain.  
  
How long has it been since Eduardo found Mark’s calm confidence _reassuring_? So long that it’s a bit of a shock just to remember that Mark’s unflappability can be shelter from a storm as well as the calm at the center of one.  
  
(And Mark isn’t truly unflappable, anyway, not really – has never been quite as detached as he so often pretends to be.)  
  
“I’ll have Nadia call Ava,” Mark says. “She’ll bitch at me about schedule changes, but this is advance notice, really. Also…if we’re trying to predict potential stumbling blocks, then, um, I should…I get jealous, so it’s probably best if we have the whole exclusivity conversation now, even though you don’t want to rush things, and I’m not trying to, but I’d rather know the answer now, whatever it is, instead of wondering while you’re away for weeks.”  
  
Even by Mark’s standards, that had to be spoken at a record-setting speed.  
  
“I think we should be exclusive,” Eduardo says, and then, before he can battle his insidious insecurities – _you’re presuming too much (again), you’re reading this wrong (again), you’re going to get hurt (even worse this time)…_ – he asks, “You don’t?”  
  
Mark gives him an impatient look. “Why would I have brought it up if I didn’t? But you. You’re…you’re…” He gestures at Eduardo’s general person as if that’s explanation enough. “…_you_.”  
  
“Okay, this is the point where I’d phone a friend or poll the audience if I thought anyone could decipher that, Mark.”  
  
That Mark doesn’t make fun of his outdated reference tells Eduardo he’s taking this seriously and is likely on the verge of becoming genuinely upset. “I know you have self-esteem issues that can’t possibly make sense even to you,” he snaps, “but _really_, Eduardo. How many people hit on you on a regular basis? How many people have you slept with? Pleasedon’tanswerthatlastone.”  
  
In rapid succession, almost as rapid as Mark’s last words, Eduardo is startled, annoyed, flattered, amused, and sympathetic. Thank God he doesn’t laugh, because no matter how ridiculous this seems to him, Mark doesn’t see that and the last thing he needs is to be laughed at right now. Mark’s moments of vulnerability, rarely visible as they are with all his walls and weapons, still provoke protectiveness in Eduardo.  
  
He doesn’t resent or fight it anymore.  
  
Still, he’s out of practice with reassuring Mark, and so he doesn’t get a response out fast enough to prevent Mark from resuming.  
  
“And, _fuck_, you aren’t even sure you’re into guys at all -”  
  
“I’m into you,” Eduardo interrupts, no hesitation and no embarrassment. “I _am_ sure of that.”  
  
Mark flushes, and Eduardo wants to touch the colour on his cheekbones to see if it would feel hot against his fingertips.  
  
“I just,” Mark says, looking away. “I don’t want you to give into me all the time when it’s not what you really want.”  
  
Eduardo stares.  
  
Because – yeah, Mark still knows him. Mark knows that Eduardo has a tendency to try too hard to please others, has trouble drawing the line between ‘nice guy’ and ‘doormat’ sometimes, has allowed himself to be pushed farther than he should at times before deciding to take a stand.  
  
But more than that – Mark is actually recognizing and _acknowledging_ that he used to, on occasion, take advantage of those tendencies. Mark is saying he knows what he did, shouldn’t have done it, and doesn’t want to do it anymore.  
  
“Mark,” Eduardo says, solemn, “I’m not ‘giving in’ to anything. I don’t want exclusivity to – to appease you or something. I want it because you and I trying to do casual sounds like the worst idea ever, and because I’d get jealous too. I want it because I want _you_, I want _this_.”  
  
It’s dramatic and sentimental and Eduardo means every word. He’s developed attractions to other people faster. He’s had more in common with other people. He’s had calmer, simpler (tamer) rapports with other people.  
  
But Eduardo has never _wanted_ like he does with Mark. Raw. Relentless. Staggering.

There’s the clicking sound of a seatbelt being released and then Mark is leaning over and kissing him.  
  
For a second, it’s a bit strange. Eduardo didn’t notice in the heat of the moment a few hours ago, but Mark’s lips are thinner and rougher than he’s used to. There’s a hint of stubble he’s not accustomed to feeling when he kisses someone. The angle is awkward, Mark half-hunched over the stick shift and the passenger seatbelt latch digging into Eduardo’s hip when he automatically moves closer.  
  
But Eduardo has spent a possibly unhealthy amount of time thinking about Mark’s mouth, and now he’s thinking about stubble burn in ways he’s never considered before, and Eduardo twists in his seat and grabs a handful of Mark’s t-shirt to tug him closer, get a better angle for sucking that reddened, bitten-raw bottom lip into his mouth. Mark makes a sound that Eduardo feels reverberate through his body like a rumble of thunder, and then they are well and truly making out in a car like a couple of high school kids.  
  
For a moment, Eduardo wants to toss away his resolution to take things slow. Clearly, he notes as he cants his hips up into Mark’s and tastes his moan, Eduardo was crazy when he made that decision. They’ve already fooled around, what’s once more before they’re apart for weeks? Why not go up to his hotel suite with Mark?  
  
_If you rush things, you’re more likely to fuck them up,_ a voice in his head reminds him. It sounds like a cross between Chris and Dr. Wu. Which is more than a little weird, but doesn’t change the fact that the voice is right. Damn it.  
  
Reluctantly, Eduardo pulls back. Mark blinks at him, pupils blown, and Eduardo has to make a conscious effort not to drag him closer again. “We should stop,” he says in a tone that doesn’t even convince himself.  
  
Mark, however, nods and slides back into his seat. Or, he would, if Eduardo wasn’t still clutching onto his t-shirt.  
  
Eduardo grudgingly lets go, and they both hold themselves still for a moment. The only sound inside the car is both of them trying to catch their breaths.  
  
“You’re going to walk into the hotel lobby like that?” Mark asks finally.  
  
Eduardo glances ruefully at his lap. “I can hold my jacket in front of me, I guess.” He peels it off, feeling Mark’s eyes on him as he moves. “At least I don’t have to wait long to jerk off.”  
  
“Jesus, that is _not helping_, Wardo.”  
  
Eduardo grins, unabashed. “I’ll call you when I’m in New York, okay?”  
  
Mark nods. His fingers are digging into the fabric of the car seat and his gaze is darting from Eduardo’s eyes to his mouth and back again.  
  
Eduardo opens the car door. “Drive carefully.”  
  
“Right. Because I won’t be distracted _at all_ knowing what you’re doing while I’m staring at the highway.”  
  
Eduardo’s leg freezes halfway out the door. “Shit, I didn’t – maybe you should -”  
  
Mark snorts. “I was obviously joking -”  
  
“Yeah, but -”  
  
“_Eduardo_. This may shock you, but I actually have a fair amount of experience in delaying gratification where you’re concerned.”  
  
“You’re being kind of flippant about your safety, Mark.”  
  
“You claim I’m flippant about everything. Now stop tempting me to take advantage of this as an excuse to come up to your room.”  
  
Well, fuck, Eduardo thinks, he very easily could have. But he didn’t, just like he didn’t fight it earlier when Eduardo pulled away, just like he agreed to take things at the pace Eduardo decided upon. An embarrassingly besotted smile threatens to overtake Eduardo’s face, but he manages to keep his voice dry. “You have the restraint of a saint.”  
  
“Not for much longer if you keep looking at me like that.”  
  
Eduardo chuckles and climbs out of the car. He shuts the door and leans over to speak through the open window. “Text me when you get home so I know you arrived safely.”  
  
“You’re taking this alarmingly seriously -”  
  
“But not until you’re parked in your driveway. Don’t text and drive.”  
  
“We’ve been in an official relationship for six hours and you’re already nagging me,” Mark says. Maybe there should be annoyance in his voice. There isn’t.

“I’ve always nagged you,” Eduardo points out, and he sounds more affectionate than annoyed too, “when you’re showing a complete disregard for your health and safety.”  
  
“_Good night_, Wardo.”  
  
“Night.” Eduardo watches Mark drive away until he can’t see the car anymore, and then he arranges his jacket in front of himself and heads inside.  
  
Twenty minutes and one orgasm later, Eduardo receives a text: _i have made it home through the untold dangers of driving while aroused. shocking, i know._  
  
_Thanks for letting me know,_ Eduardo texts back. Then: _Happy masturbating :)_  
  
Nine minutes later, he gets a reply. _new low: getting turned on by an emoticon._  
  
Eduardo falls asleep with a smile on his face, and sleeps better than he has in months.  
  
\--  
  
Once their breakfasts are served and the waiter out of earshot, Eduardo gets straight to the point. “I asked you before we left not to pick a fight with Mark while we were here, didn’t I?”  
  
“You did,” Suzana agrees as she drizzles blackberry honey over her half grapefruit.  
  
“It was on the grounds that the two of you getting into an argument is basically my worst nightmare. After, like, my father and Mark getting into one, of course.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“And you agreed that you wouldn’t, on the grounds of not wanting to give me an aneurysm.”  
  
“I did. And I kept that promise.”  
  
Eduardo would snort, if he didn’t have smoked salmon and spinach in his mouth. “How did you keep it, Suzana? You were deliberately provoking him -”  
  
“Which is not the same thing.”  
  
“Semantics.”  
  
“Strategy,” Suzana corrects. She surveys him as she sips her espresso, but her gaze is uncharacteristically soft. “Eduardo. Years ago, my best friend told me he also had experience with betrayal and heartbreak. He told me about a friendship which meant the world to him, and which nearly broke him when he lost it. He told me how hard he fought to get over it, move on, build a life for himself that wasn’t defined by tragedy and by that person he once adored.”  
  
“Suzy…”  
  
“Then one day, years later, my best friend tells me that this former friend of his, the one he loved so much and who hurt him so badly, is interested in him. He tells me he’s interested back and that they’ve fooled around a couple of times. He tells me he wants to be friends with this man again. And I see what he doesn’t – that he wants a lot more than friendship and that it terrifies him but won’t stop him. How could I not worry?”  
  
“Worrying is one thing. But trying to sabotage -”  
  
“Not sabotage. _Strategy_. I wanted to see – and, more importantly, I wanted my best friend to see – if Mark Zuckerberg was the same selfish asshole he used to be, or if he’d grown up enough to earn a second chance.”  
  
Eduardo swallows hard, looks away. “So you provoked him.”  
  
“If he reacted without restraint, that wouldn’t show much consideration for your feelings, would it? If he went too far in the opposite direction, tried too hard to get on my good side -”  
  
Eduardo does snort this time. There’s no other reasonable response to the idea of Mark sucking up to…well, anyone.  
  
“- then it would be proof he’s dishonest and manipulative, since he’s pretty much the antithesis of timid. On the other hand, if he stood up for himself while still demonstrating restraint, it could only be for your sake. And you would see that.”  
  
Eduardo contemplates this as he sips his latte. “That doesn’t explain why you tried to make him jealous.”  
  
Suzana shrugs. “It became obvious pretty quickly that the thing that bothered him the most was any suggestion we might be more than friends. I wanted to see how he’d handle my upping the ante. He didn’t bite, and you noticed that…eventually. I figured it would make you less nervous when you inevitably decided to hook up officially.”  
  
In other words, Suzana wanted Mark to either confirm Eduardo’s worst fears about him or give him more reason to hope, to trust.  
  
Given how things have turned out, he can’t really be angry with her.

“You are frighteningly Machiavellian sometimes, Suzy.”  
  
“Eduardo, please. That was barely the tip of the iceberg.”  
  
“I’m beginning to suspect that future generations will condemn me in their history books for introducing you and Sean.”  
  
“Should I be concerned that in exchanging phone numbers I signed away my immortal soul?”  
  
“You should be more concerned about him hitting on you the instant his girlfriend du jour is out of the picture.” A horrifying thought occurs to Eduardo. “Oh God, _please_ don’t date him. Sean would cheat on you, you would kill him, I’d go to prison as an accessory… I can’t go to prison, Suzy. Have you seen what they wear?”  
  
“Right, because _that_ would be the worst part of prison.” Suzana rolls her eyes. “Remind me to lend you _Oz_ on DVD. And, really, as if Zuckerberg wouldn’t break you out.”  
  
“In any case, you’ve just given me a new worst nightmare. So thanks for that.”  
  
“You should worry less about my imaginary dating life and more about the recent developments in your own.”  
  
“I am worried,” Eduardo admits.  
  
The prospect of letting Mark have even more of Eduardo’s heart than he once (owned, used, crushed) held is not as terrifying as it used to be, but Eduardo would be either a liar or an idiot if he claimed not to be nervous.  
  
“Honestly, I’ve been vacillating between anxiety and excitement about Mark, and between relief and disappointment about leaving. On the one hand, it would’ve been cool to be able to stick around, have something of a – a honeymoon period or whatever…but on the other hand, I think we need some time and space just to…adjust, you know?”  
  
Suzana nods in sympathy and lets him vent.  
  
When he sees her off, she pauses before climbing into the taxi to SFO, one hand on his arm. “Be careful,” she says. Not giving a warning so much as asking for a promise.  
  
Eduardo takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, nodding. “I’ll try to be.”  
  
\--  
Até amanhã = “See you tomorrow”


End file.
